A gentle critque..

[Carlos]

- D is not C++ ... Importance: SIGH
- D cannot toast bread ... IMPORTANCE: SHOW-TOASTER
- D cannot prevent idiocy in programmers ... IMPORTANCE: FATAL

Charlie


Ben Cooley wrote:
> There are a few major problems with D that still prevent it from being practical
> for use in the real world.
> 
> I'll just list them and note their importance.  Anything witha
> 
> - Inability to access C/C++ include files...  Importance:   SHOW-STOPPER
> --------------------------------------------
> 
> C++ can do this, D can not.
> 
> The size, scale, and prevalence of C and C++ libraries and code make writing
> wrappers for all of these libraries impractical.  That D can not just easily
> include C and C++ headers "as is" gives it a serious and I would suggest fatal
> disadvantage vs. C++.
> 
> C++ out of the box could include C header files, meaning that even today I have
> access to the largest possible body of third party libraries and code.  Binary
> compatibility with C only is just not good enough.
> 
> Incompatibility with C++ ABI...              Importance:    SHOW-STOPPER
> --------------------------------------------
> 
> Even if you could include C++ headers, you could not interface with C++ classes.
> C has abi compatibility with C++, and C++ has ABI compatibility with C.  C and
> C++ have more or less abi compatibility with most other systems (including COM,
> CORBA).  D intends to be used for system programming, but is icompatible with
> the most prevalent existing ABI. 
> 
> Inability to make D code work with C/C++    Importance:    SHOW-STOPPER
> ---------------------------------------------
> 
> Likewise, if you write D code, your code exists only in the very small world of
> D, and will not be useful to the world outside of the D programming community.
> This makes any library or system you might create only marginally useful, and is
> a strong disincentive for anybody to actually write code in D for general public
> consumption.
> 
> No support for meta-programming or Macros   Importance:    SHOW-STOPPER
> ---------------------------------------------
> 
> Say what you will about the unclean use of macros in C and C++, they are
> critical for a large set of important functionality that C and C++ programmers
> take for granted.  There are many ways to provide hygenic macro replacesments,
> true meta programming, or generative programming.  D offers none of these, and
> no way to replace the functionality lost using macros.
> 
> Correct me if I am wrong on this point, but the meta-programming offered by
> macro code injection is just not easily replaced by mixins, templates or other
> language features.
> 
> Provides no additional support for safe programming vs. C/C++  Importance: HIGH
> ---------------------------------------------
> 
> C# and Java trade incompatibility and the inability to easily integrate with
> C/C++ for the additional productivity and security.  D trades incompatibility
> for.. incompatibility.  Programming in D is just as unsafe as programming in C
> and C++, without the support of Microsoft and other 3rd parties to provide huge
> quantities of high level libraries and a powerful integrated environment.  D is
> unsafe by design, just as C and C++ were, but the difference is that this is
> 2006, and not the 70's, 80's, or 90's.
> 
> The choice one is left with is to either program in a safe language and accept
> the overhead of the JIT, or use C/C++ with it's large existing base of tools and
> code other things in C# or Java.  One wonders why this is so, since C# has
> unsafe capabilities.. and CSecured offers safe C programming capabilities.  How
> long should we have to wait for a safe systems level language.. till microsoft
> releases their Singularity project and their Bartok compiler?
> 
> ------------
> 
> The first two issues make much of the remaining critique irrelevant.  Once you
> have a singel showstopper, additional issues don't really make any difference.
> However I'll list them anyway.
> 
> - Inability to integrate with visual studio.  No good IDE.. Importance...   HIGH
> 
> - No stable standard.  Importance...  MEDIUM
> 
> - Difficult to control what is garbage collected and what is not.  Garbage
> collection performance.  Garbage collection violates C++'s "zero overhead" rule
> where any performance overhead is at the programmers explicit discression.
> Importance...   MEDIUM
> 
> - Not open source.    Importance... HIGH
> 
> - Very small library base.   Importance... HIGH
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> A modest suggestion, were I to try to introduce a new language which I intended
> to be not only clean and simple, but "popular" and widely used as well would be
> to squarely address the first three issues above.
> 
> C++ provided a translator.  The original versions of C++ were able to output C
> code which would compile on any ordinary C compiler.  Likewise, the idea that C
> headers could simply be directly included in a C++ language file, and "it just
> worked" allows any C code to be used in a C++ program.. a feature that all C++
> programmers use today.
> 
> Finally, C and C++ code code be easily mixed within a single project, another
> feature of C++ that is used today.  Since C++ can consume any C header, and in
> most cases C can understand the ABI of C++ with the extern "C" {} wrapper, it's
> possible to go in both directions.
> 
> All this being said, I would really like to see a language like D succeed,
> because I need the features it has.  But I can't abandon my C and C++ libraries,
> and I am not about to commit to coding wrappers for them, nor forgoing using my
> current programming environment and debugging tools.  When I adopted C++ 20
> years ago, I didn't need to do this.  C++ integrated well with my tools and
> existing libs (the exception being the debugger of course).  But overall it was
> a good citizen in the overall world of C/C++ code.. it played nicely.  The same
> can not be said of D, C#, or Java, and D doesn't have the other benefits of C#
> or Java.
> 
> Until D addresses these issues, it will be nothing more than a niche language
> offering syntactic cleanliness and interesting features to a few faithful, but
> largely ignored by the rest of the programming world.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>