Biggest problems w/ D

[Bill Baxter]

C. Dunn wrote:
> After converting a large, system-level program to D, I can name the biggest problems:

> 2) No 64-bit support. This not only limits memory usage, but also
> causes 2x runtime on my AMD processor.  My D code is the same speed
> as my 32-bit C++ code, but both are 2x slower than 64-bit C++ code.
> Same compiler.  Same machine.

Been asked for many-a-time. I believe GDC, now supports 64-bit 
compilation.   http://dgcc.sourceforge.net/

The problem is that the linker used by DMD is some ancient thing written 
in assembly that ain't never gonna get upgraded to 64bit.
A new linker must be found or written eventually.  Unless someone 
interested in helping with that comes out of the woodwork, it's probably 
going to mean a 6-12 month halt in progress for D as Walter goes off to 
write a new linker.    I think few people want that to happen to D, at 
least not until the language has all its issues pretty much worked out.

> 3) Lack of forward declarations. The compiler figures everything out
> in simple cases, but it gets very confused with templates.  That
> dramatically hurts the genericity of D, since it limits what
> templates can do.  One nice use of templates in C++ is to set a
> static variable on a type, as a sort of "property" with high-speed
> access.  With D, I have accomplished this only by putting all
> templates in the same file.
> 
> This problem also causes the compiler to depend on the order of files
> on the command-line.

Been asked for many-a-time.  I think the problem is again the black-box 
linker that no one knows how to fix.

--bb