Yes, I just wished more people liked D so it got momentum.
Why I Like D
11–20 of 134 posts
Re: Why I Like D
#12D makes a compelling promise, but it's still ongoing metamorphosis. Changes too rapidly for libraries to take root. Every time I look at it there's a "new, better way" of doing everything so all the tools and libraries are out of date, at all times. And the whole thing doesn't sound so clean and elegant anymore.
All languages (even C to some extent) that are in wide use evolve towards new and better ways, and obsolete old ways. I don't even recognize C++ anymore, and I wrote a frakkin compiler for it.
Re: Why I Like D
#13Interesting points, but the up sides of dlang are over shadowed by the fact that rust won the hearts of many low level developers and has gotten traction. I know of a few companies that are having difficult finding skilled developers because of this.
> the up sides of dlang are over shadowed by the fact that rust won the hearts of many low level developers and has gotten traction
Then wait until you see how Rust usage compares with C and C++ usage. Sorry, but I fail to see the point of your comment.
Re: Why I Like D
#14Yes, I just wished more people liked D so it got momentum.
D doesn't have evangelists or a marketing team. It's just people who find it really useful.
Re: Why I Like D
#15Yes, I just wished more people liked D so it got momentum.
Still wondering why don't people like D more after all these years it's been there.
Re: Why I Like D
#16Yes, I just wished more people liked D so it got momentum.
Still wondering why don't people like D more after all these years it's been there.
Probabaly lack of killer application.
If you released super popular whatever (game engine, embedded platform, 3d design software) that uses D as its customization language suddenly a lot more people would have a good reason to learn D.
Re: Why I Like D
#17D makes a compelling promise, but it's still ongoing metamorphosis. Changes too rapidly for libraries to take root. Every time I look at it there's a "new, better way" of doing everything so all the tools and libraries are out of date, at all times. And the whole thing doesn't sound so clean and elegant anymore.
All languages (even C to some extent) that are in wide use evolve towards new and better ways, and obsolete old ways. I don't even recognize C++ anymore, and I wrote a frakkin compiler for it.
Speaking of people who have written C++ compilers, what do you think of Circle? Have you given any thought to targeting GPU shaders from D? I think "C-like low level control but with strong compile time metaprogramming" might be something of a sweet spot, though there is a lot of complexity to the space (mostly the oddball storage spaces).
Re: Why I Like D
#18Yes, I just wished more people liked D so it got momentum.
I first learned C++ 20+ years ago. While I've appreciated it, I also knew its shortcomings and had been looking for a replacement.
D had some missteps along the way that lost some initial traction. I also wouldn't be surprised if timing was a factor with more C++ warts being added while the programming community has learned more lessons along the way that could be applied to the next languages (Go, Rust).
As I followed D, the problems I remember there being were:
- Compiler availability (DMD vs GCC)
- Split stdlib
- It was aiming for C/C++ post-Java but covered more Java use case (GC) than the remaining C/C++ ones (no-GC). It took a while before BetterC. No idea how well that ecosystem has matured.
- It felt like they were shoehorning every feature into the language rather than having a cohesive design strategy
These have slowly been resolving but Rust is now here, targets most of BetterC's use cases by default, and the borrow checker has let me squeeze out performance out of my code that would have been irresponsible without the compiler making it maintainable.
Re: Why I Like D
#19BetterC got a lot of resistance at first, along the lines of who needs it. (BetterC is a subset of D that only relies on the C standard library.) But over time it has accumulated a lot of users, as being C without the troubles. We've gone a step further with ImportC, and now C code can be imported directly into the D compiler, which makes it easy to interface D code to your existing C base.
You seem to have some familiarity with the language. Nonetheless, you're understating a bit the degree of integration with C. You can also: create a shared library in D and call it trivially from C or any language with a FFI, call C shared libraries with little effort from D, compile a C file and add the .o file to your D program compilation command directly, use dstep to write C bindings for you, and directly #include a C header file with dpp. C is more or less a subset of D at this point. C programmers can stick with what they know but use D for incremental elimination of pain points.
Edit: I added that first sentence because it's awkward to tell the creator of the language that his answer was incomplete.