D vs. C#

[Walter Bright]

Robert Fraser wrote:
> Walter Bright Wrote:
>> I've never been able to discover what the fundamental advantage of
>> a VM is.
> 
> I'm sure there are a lot of advantages, but here's one I can think of
> off the top of my head: say you're designing an application for
> mobile devices/smartphones. There are a lot of different phones out
> there, probably all with different APIs (or no native API accessible
> outside the company that made the phone), but if your software is
> running in a VM it'll run the same everywhere. Now say you're a cell
> phone manufacturer introducing a new smartphone -- adding the VM
> makes all the software written to use that platform instantly
> compatible with your device.

That isn't an advantage of the VM. It's an advantage of a language that 
has no implementation-defined or undefined behavior. Given that, the 
same portability results are achieved.