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D Programming Language

dlang.org

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Re: D Programming Language

#131

Post by 1718627440 »

cinntaile wrote: post #33
gspr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, that is why carpenters are still around and no one buys Ikea. I'm sorry, what? Are you suggesting that Ikea made carpenters obsolete? It's been less than 6 months since last I had a professional carpenter do work in my house. He seemed very real. And charged very real prices. This despite the fact that I've got lots of Ikea stuff.

Compared to before, not a lot of carpenters/furniture makers are left. This is due to automation.

Nah, IKEA has replaced moving furniture with throwing it away and rebuying it. Prior to IKEA hiring a carpenter was also something that is done a few times in a lifetime/century. If anything it has commodized creating new furniture.

Re: D Programming Language

#132

Post by arcadia_leak »

rafaelmn wrote: post #130
arcadia_leak wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> C# C interop is pretty smooth True, but you still need to either generate or manually write the bindings. In D, you just import the C headers directly without depending on the bindings' maintainers. > If it was an actual C++ modernization attempt that stayed C compatible it would have seen much better Any D compiler is literally also a C compiler. I sincerely don't know how can one be more C compatible than that. >…

I'm not saying D didn't have nice features - but if D/C#/Java are valid options I'm never picking D - language benefits cannot outweigh the ecosystem/support behind those two. Go picked a niche with backend plumbing and got Google backing to push it through. Meanwhile look at how popular Zig is getting 2 decades later. Why is that not D ? D also has comp-time and had it for over a decade I think ? Zig proves there's…

> D/C#/Java are valid options I'm never picking D

This is perfectly fair.

> D was in the perfect spot to fill if it did not make the GC decision

I just find it hard to believe that the GC is the one big wart that pushed everyone away from the language. To me, the GC combined with the full power of a systems language are the killer features that made me stick to D. The language is not perfect and has bad parts too, but I really don't see the GC as one of them.

Re: D Programming Language

#133

Post by jpc0 »

arcadia_leak wrote: post #123
999900000999 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What problem is D solving ?

One good case for it that I see is a viable basis for cross-platform desktop apps. Today, cross-platform desktop GUI apps are either just a snapshot of the website contained inside Electron, or a C/C++ code base with manual memory management. D can serve as a nice middle ground in that space.

Where is the extensive tooling support for this use case if that is where you think it fits?

Apple is all in on Swift, so you will not be writing native MacOS or iOS code for UI in D, best case you put your business logic in D but you can do that in any language which has bindings to swift/Obj-C.

Android is all in on Kotlin/Java, not D again

Microsoft is all in on C#, again not D.

Linux your two best options for UI is GTK and Qt, C and C++ respectively.

So the only place where you could bave seemless integration is Linux through FFI.

Here's the thing though, for building a core layer that you can wrap a UI around, Rust has insanely good ergonomics, with very good third-party libraries to automatically generate safe bindings to a decent amount of languages, at least all those listed above and WASM for web.

None of those uses cases are painless in D.

Re: D Programming Language

#134

Post by DeathArrow »

optionalsquid wrote: post #129
rafaelmn wrote: post #100

IMHO D just missed the mark with the GC in core. It was released in a time where a replacement for C++ was sorely needed, and it tried to position itself as that (obvious from the name). But by including the GC/runtime it went into a category with C# and Java which are much better options if you're fine with shipping a runtime and GC. Eventually Go showed up to crowd out this space even further. Meanwhile in the C/C+…

My (likely unfair) impression of D is that it feels a bit rudderless: It is trying to be too many things to too many people, and as a consequence it doesn't really stand out compared to the languages that commit to a paradigm. Do you want GC? Great! Do not want GC? Well, you can turn it off, and lose access to most things. Do you want a borrow-checker? Great, D does that as well, though less wholeheartedly than Rust.…

>My (likely unfair) impression of D is that it feels a bit rudderless: It is trying to be too many things to too many people, and as a consequence it doesn't really stand out compared to the languages that commit to a paradigm.

My (likely unfair) impression of D is that it feels a bit rudderless: It is trying to be too many things to too many people, and as a consequence it doesn't really stand out compared to the languages that commit to a paradigm.

Nim kind of does that, too.

Re: D Programming Language

#136

Post by tmtvl »

nurettin wrote: post #92
arcadia_leak wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

D and Rust are on the opposite sides at dealing with memory safety. Rust ensures safety by constantly making you think about memory with its highly sophisticated compile-time checks. D, on the other hand, offers you to either employ a GC and forget about (almost) all memory-safety concerns or a block scoped opt-out with cowboy-style manual memory management. D retains object-oriented programming but also allows funct…

> block scoped opt-out with cowboy-style manual memory management Is this a Walter Bright alt? I've seen him use the cowboy programmer term a few times on the forum before.

The term 'Cowboy coder' has been around for some time. Everybody's favourite unreliable source of knowledge has issues dating back to 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_coding>

Re: D Programming Language

#137

Post by arcadia_leak »

jpc0 wrote: post #133
arcadia_leak wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One good case for it that I see is a viable basis for cross-platform desktop apps. Today, cross-platform desktop GUI apps are either just a snapshot of the website contained inside Electron, or a C/C++ code base with manual memory management. D can serve as a nice middle ground in that space.

Where is the extensive tooling support for this use case if that is where you think it fits? Apple is all in on Swift, so you will not be writing native MacOS or iOS code for UI in D, best case you put your business logic in D but you can do that in any language which has bindings to swift/Obj-C. Android is all in on Kotlin/Java, not D again Microsoft is all in on C#, again not D. Linux your two best options for UI i…

It's true that there is no off the shelf tool that you can use right now to write your app, but it certainly doesn't prove that making such a tool is impossible or even complicated.

It makes sense for a complex productivity app (e.g. an office suite editor) to implement the UI from scratch anyway, and for that they may choose D. If Jane Street didn't pick OCaml, it would've died long ago -- in the same manner, some company might pick D to do UI or anything else really.

Re: D Programming Language

#138

Post by tmtvl »

gspr wrote: post #95
cinntaile wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to before, not a lot of carpenters/furniture makers are left. This is due to automation.

> Compared to before, not a lot of carpenters/furniture makers are left. Which is it? Carpenters or furniture makers? Because the two have nothing in common beyond the fact that both professions primarily work with wood. The former has been unaffected by automation – or even might plausibly have more demand due to the overall economic activity caused by automation! The latter certainly has been greatly affected. The…

There is a language issue: carpenter is used as synonym of woodworker. It's like someone who doesn't know anything about computers using the term 'memory' to mean storage rather than working memory (i.e. RAM).

Re: D Programming Language

#139

Post by gorgonical »

rafaelmn wrote: post #100

IMHO D just missed the mark with the GC in core. It was released in a time where a replacement for C++ was sorely needed, and it tried to position itself as that (obvious from the name). But by including the GC/runtime it went into a category with C# and Java which are much better options if you're fine with shipping a runtime and GC. Eventually Go showed up to crowd out this space even further. Meanwhile in the C/C+…

Re: the point about Zig: Especially considering I used and played a lot with D's BetterC model when I was a student, I wonder as a language designer what Walter thinks about the development and rise in popularity of Zig. Of course, thinking "strategically" about a language's adoption comes off as Machiavellian in a crowd of tinkers/engineers, but I can't help but wonder.

Re: D Programming Language

#140

Post by nottorp »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #67
nottorp wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know the joke with "I'll repeat the joke to you until you understand it?". That's why some things get reposted and upvoted. In hope of getting someone else to understand them. By the way, do you complain about sock accounts when yet another "Here is this problem, and by the way we sell a product that claims to solve it" gets upvoted?

> Do you know the joke with "I'll repeat the joke to you until you understand it?". Nope. That's not a joke. That's not funny. > That's why some things get reposted and upvoted. In hope of getting someone else to understand them. No, they get reposted and upvoted by sock accounts in hope that someone will finally be interested in a 30 year old programming language. > By the way, do you complain about sock accounts wh…

> What does content marketing have to do with sock accounts?

If you accuse interesting subjects of being pushed by sock accounts, why wouldn't content marketing, which has even more interest in getting to the front page, be pushed by sock accounts?

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