D vs VM-based platforms

[Ary Manzana]

lubosh escribió:
> Hi all,
> 
> I wonder what you all think about the future of programming platforms. I've got a lot of code written in C# and lately I started to read more about D.
> 
> Honestly, I feel quite refreshed to re-discover native compilation in D again.

Me too. :-)

It seems so much more lightweight than .NET framework or Java. Why 
there's so much push on the market (Microsoft, Sun) for executing source 
code within virtual machines? Do we really need yet another layer 
between hardware and our code? What's your opinion? I wonder how much 
stir up would D cause if it would have nice and powerful standardized 
library and really good IDE (like VS.NET)

I think the thought is: if in every machine there is a virtual machine 
with a 10Gb standard library, then, although it's slower than native 
code (but we're improving it each day!), writing software is much more 
easier and faster. Why? Because you already have most of the common 
functions and classes written for you: xml, streams, collections, 
network, etc. This also means that if your public method recieves a 
"List", because it's standard, everyone understands it quickly. Also the 
standard library can be improved, so each program improves as well.

Further, you have reflection, which gives you a tremendous power to 
extend your code with plugins (like in the Eclipse framework).

But... Everytime I open an app and it takes from one to two minutes I 
remember the good old native code, and that's I'd like D to become more 
popular. And I know the language itself isn't enough these days, and 
that a good standard library is a must (phobos and tango), as well as a 
really good IDE.

There isn't a "really good" IDE yet, but it's only a matter of time. 
Take a look at what the next release of Descent will have:

http://www.dsource.org/projects/descent/browser/trunk/descent.ui/screenshots/descent_ddbg.jpg?format=raw