DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu

[Iain Buclaw]

On Jun 26, 2013 9:50 PM, "Joseph Rushton Wakeling" <
joseph.wakeling at webdrake.net> wrote:
>
> On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 19:26:37 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:
>>
>> I can't be bothered to read all points the both of you have mentioned
thus far, but I do hope to add a voice of reason to calm you down. ;)
>
>
> Quick, nurse, the screens!
>
> ... or perhaps, "Someone throw a bucket of water over them"? :-P
>
>

Don't call be Shirley...

>> From a licensing perspective, the only part of the source that can be
"closed off" is the DMD backend.  Any optimisation fixes in the DMD backend
does not affect GDC/LDC.
>
>
> To be honest, I can't see the "sales value" of optimization fixes in the
DMD backend given that GDC and LDC already have such strong performance.
 The one strong motivation to use DMD over the other two compilers is (as
you describe) access to the bleeding edge of features, but I'd have thought
this will stop being an advantage in time as/when the frontend becomes a
genuinely "plug-and-play" component.
>

Sometimes it feels like achieving this is as trying to break down a brick
barrier with a shoelace.

> By the way, I hope you didn't feel I was trying to speak on behalf of GDC
-- wasn't my intention. :-)
>

I did, and it hurt.  :o)

>> Having used closed source languages in the past, I strongly believe that
closed languages do not stimulate growth or adoption at all.  And where
adoption does occur, knowledge is kept within specialised groups.
>
>
> Last year I had the dubious privilege of having to work with MS Visual
Basic for a temporary job.  What was strikingly different from the various
open source languages was that although there was an extensive quantity of
documentation available from Microsoft, it was incredibly badly organized,
much of it was out of date, and there was no meaningful community support
that I could find.
>
> I got the job done, but I would surely have had a much easier experience
with any of the open source languages out there.  Suffice to say that the
only reason I used VB in this case was because it was an obligatory part of
the work -- I'd never use it by choice.
>

Yes, it's like trying to learn D, but the only reference you have of the
language is the grammar page, and an IDE which offers thousands of
auto-complete options for things that *sound* like what you want, but don't
compile when it comes to testing.  :o)

Regards
-- 
Iain Buclaw

*(p < e ? p++ : p) = (c & 0x0f) + '0';
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