A look at the D programming language by Ferdynand Górski

[Rob T]

On Tuesday, 15 January 2013 at 10:22:20 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> A language such as C++ seems like a bad fit for a scripting 
>> language because of it's complexity and the difficultly with 
>> parsing through it. Also a scripted language probably should 
>> not have low level access that is provided by languages such 
>> as D and C/C++.
>>
>> --rt
>
> Why not? In my experience small scripts often turn into bigger 
> programs and sooner or later you need some sort of low level 
> features. Then you have to write modules in C/C++ and use Swig 
> or something to integrate them. That's why I prefer D, because 
> you can get the whole shebang _if necessary_. There are also 
> copyright issues. If you deliver a Python program, anyone could 
> rip it, even if you compile it to byte code. If you distribute 
> native executables, it's harder to rip your program. In 
> general, I find scripting languages less useful for projects 
> that (might) develop into something bigger. Now that I come to 
> think of it, scripting languages are inherently "quick and 
> dirty", that's why they are not really scalable (think of the 
> class system in Python and Lua, not the real deal).

For many applications where a scripted language really shines, 
there are usually security related issues that require placing 
strict limitations on what the scripts are allowed to do. You 
have to understand that the scripts tend to be implemented by the 
users of the system, rather than just the original developers. 
Also code may be transmitted from one machine to another and 
executed, so you have to be careful that malicious code cannot do 
much harm.

I agree with your comment about larger projects that are 
scripted. I think you'll tend to use large applications like that 
in environments where the scripting provides little to no 
advantages, and it becomes mostly a disadvantage in terms of 
eating up resources for no good reason. I can see an advantage 
for the developers, but the users of the application tends to 
suffer, so if the application could later be compiled to native 
machine code for distribution, that would close the gap.

--rt