D to Javascript converter (a hacked up dmd)

[Alex Rønne Petersen]

On 01-03-2012 19:04, Ary Manzana wrote:
> On 2/29/12 2:34 PM, Alex Rønne Petersen wrote:
>> On 29-02-2012 18:32, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> On 2/26/12 9:51 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
>>>> https://github.com/downloads/adamdruppe/dtojs/dtojs.zip
>>> [snip]
>>>
>>> That's interesting. So the idea is to make an entire subset of D
>>> convertible to Javascript?
>>>
>>> What use cases do you have in mind?
>>>
>>>
>>> Andrei
>>>
>>
>> Avoiding writing JS directly in web apps comes to mind.
>>
>
> I think it's cool you can convert D to JS, but I don't see why anyone
> would want to do it.
>
> 1. JS is a superior language: variables are dynamic and are not bound to
> just one single type during their lifetime. JS objects can store any
> property.

You're arguing with a crowd gathered around a statically typed language. 
I think we can predict what this argument will lead to. :)

> 2. JS funcions are much easier to write (no need to declare types) and
> also to pass around (no need to write "&"). If you'd like to annotate
> variables, you could use Closure:
> https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler/docs/js-for-compiler

See the above.

> 3. With JS you don't have to compile and run your code (well, I guess
> you could make something smart in D for that).

? The D -> JS converter just translates it. It's no different from 
running e.g. the CoffeeScript compiler.

> 4. If you write JS you can debug it in the browser. No need to track
> back to the original source code.

Valid argument. Maybe we can make the D -> JS converter help in some way 
here?

> 5. If you don't like JS syntax or verbosity, you can use CoffeeScript,
> which is just a syntax rewriter, not a language/paradigm shift:
> http://coffeescript.org/

Don't even get me started on the horrible "features" in CoffeeScript. 
The guy who wrote the language literally had no clue what he was doing 
(he admitted to reading some "make your own language" book), and it 
isn't much better than JavaScript in terms of odd behavior and weird 
design decisions.

> 6. Javascript objects have some built-in properties that are different
> from D. So implementing those in D would make their performance worse
> (but you can always hard-code those functions into the compiler and
> translate them directly to their JS equivalent).

Can you be a little more specific here?

>
> The good thing about writing in D is that you could probably get some
> IDE for autocompletion and such. You might also like to type things
> instead of using dynamic types.

To be fair, excellent JS IDEs exist already; Visual Studio has great JS 
auto-completion, and ReSharper enhances it a lot too.

-- 
- Alex