On the future of DIP1000
Bill Hicks via Digitalmars-d-announce
digitalmars-d-announce at puremagic.com
Sat Aug 27 08:19:40 PDT 2016
On Saturday, 27 August 2016 at 05:57:25 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>
> We've never mocked Rust's safety features, although I have
> posted that they are too complex for D and desire a simpler
> system.
>
"A disharmonic personality. Reading any amount of Rust code
evokes the joke 'friends don't let friends skip leg day' and the
comic imagery
(https://www.google.com/search?q=friends+don%27t+let+friends+skip+leg+day&safe=off&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CB0QsARqFQoTCM_ViveKhMkCFUfZPgodVsgLsA&biw=1582&bih=1352) of men with hulky torsos resting on skinny legs". --Andrei
If that's not mockery, then how would you describe it?
>
>> but now they're trying to be more like it.
>
> We've had proposals for more safety annotation in D for at
> least 10 years (from Bartosz Milewski), but they've always been
> more complex than I wanted. DIP1000 is a much simpler scheme.
>
>
And he continues:
"Unfortunately, that's seldom the problem domain, which means a
large fraction of the thinking and coding are dedicated to
essentially a clerical job (which GC languages actually automate
out of sight). Safe, deterministic memory reclamation is a hard
problem, but is not the only problem or even the most important
problem in a program". --Andrei
It should be quiet obvious that a non-optional GC does not belong
in a language that claims to be a system programming language.
Not only that, but for all these years D has had a rather poor
GC. At last we've witnessed the removal of GC usage from Phobos,
and, if my understanding is correct, y'all trying to change the
role GC plays in the language. So maybe the Rust folks know
something Dr. Andrei doesn't? And why criticize Rust just
because they've taken a potentially better approach to memory
management while 'D has had the downsides of GC but hasn't
enjoyed its benefits'? Besides, if you can't please the
Linux-kernel-developer type, then you ain't got a system
programming language. And if we are honest, I don't think D fits
anywhere.
>> I bet in a few years we'll see hygienic macro system in D.
>
> I seriously doubt it (they've been proposed many times). I
> haven't studied Rust's macro system, but others I've seen
> (expression templates, user defined syntax, CPP, macro
> assemblers, etc.) are very powerful, but ultimately off-putting
> because it makes code very hard to understand.
>
> ...
>
> A macro system is like putting a 2000 HP motor in a car. It's
> sure exciting, but ultimately you just don't want it in a daily
> driver, or anyplace other than the track, because it'll kill
> you.
I'm not a big fan of macros either, but should we ban chainsaws
too because they have the potential to cause serious injuries?
The problem with misuse of features like macros is lack of proper
training and education, not so much the features themselves.
Large percentage of professional developers don't even have a
degree in CS/SE, and they lack proper training. Most of them
become developers because of the money, and many of them get
hired for the wrong reasons (just look at the interview process),
and these are the kinds of developers responsible for large
percentage of the garbage code that's out there. Corporations
that hire them care mostly about producing the largest amount of
code in the shortest amount of time to increase earnings and
profits. Many helper tools and dumbed-down languages have
already been created particularly for these kinds of crowds.
Unfortunately, we see a similar pattern in other areas. The
dumbing down of society and the deteriorating education system is
not an accident. Just compare the writing skills of the average
person from, say, the 1930s to what we have today, not to mention
their level of intellect. And today we have spell checkers and
software to check grammar, how amusing. Should we make changes
to the English language to help these people make fewer mistakes?
More information about the Digitalmars-d-announce
mailing list