D vs Java

[Fredrik Olsson]

Niko Korhonen skrev:
> Georg Wrede wrote:
>> (Walter,) anytime somebody doubts D as a superior Academic Language, 
>> have them talk with me.
>>
>> Another thing, if we can get D popular in the academia, both research 
>> and teaching will gain a lot. And as an aside, 5 years after that, 
>> who'll ever want to do programming in any other language???
> 
> Don't you think some high-level language of declarative nature such as 
> Scheme, Haskell, Ruby or Python (or even Boo, O'Caml or Scala for that 
> matter) would serve better as a first language?
> 
> Scheme and Haskell really concentrate on expressing computational 
> problems in their own domain, hence reputed as "executable specification".
> 
> Even though D is very nice it really can't compete in "high-levelness" 
> with the aforementioned languages. I personally see D more as a 
> professional's tool for building real-life software as academic research 
> language.
> 
> As a side note, unfortunately none of the academic research languages 
> are used widely for building real-life software, although they are 
> *designed* to allow easy expression of computational ideas, i.e. to be 
> easy to use. I for one would be extremely happy of getting a chance of 
> using something like Haskell at work. Come to think of it, I would be 
> extremely happy to use D.
> 
> For some reason IT industry is both extremely sadistic and masochistic 
> by insisting it's workers to use the worst languages available (C++) for 
> all work (especially if the language doesn't suit the problem domain at 
> all), constantly doing huge layoffs, offshoring and delivering products 
> so bad and faulty that any traditional industry would be out of business 
>  on the first day.
> 
If one should take the full step with D (Although a bit too late now), 
one should not have chosen the Simula school of OOP but the Smalltalk 
OOP school.

D is super nice, and I love it. But if I take a step back and look at 
it, it really is barely more than C++ with a better syntax, and a few 
goodies thrown in for good measure.  It is not like it allows for 
anything radically new and better, just the same old in a better package 
and with more convenience.

As D never aimed for compatibility with C++ classes, there never was a 
need for following that trail. Stuff like dynamic typing, runtime access 
to the class system, really do makes a difference.

The Objective-C solution is truly nice, anyone who have coded in 
OpenSTEP or Cocoa can agree that the difference in implementation allows 
for some really great and productive stuff. Unfortunately Objective-C is 
ugly as sin :). But I see no reason why someone could not make a 
language with C-like syntax that follows the Smalltalk paradigms. Heck, 
for novices and most everyday use no one would know the difference :)

// Fredrik