D to Javascript converter (a hacked up dmd)

[Jacob Carlborg]

On 2012-03-01 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.

I really miss static typing sometimes in my day to day work (Ruby, JS, ...).

> 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

D's new lambda syntax is way more superior than the one in JS. Most of 
the times I would like to be able to specify types in function declarations.

> 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).

True.

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

True. But if you're compiler is good enough that won't be a problem, 
i.e. CoffeeScript.

> 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/

Already doing that. But if you're doing that you would most likley 
pre-compile it and have the same problems as 3. and 4.

> 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).
>
> 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.


-- 
/Jacob Carlborg