D vs. C#

[Robert Fraser]

Walter Bright Wrote:

> Considering that a C compiler exists for a far broader range of devices 
> than VMs do, all the motivation that is needed is the language needs to 
> be a) popular or b) have huge resources from a company like Sun to 
> finance development of all those VMs. Sun could just as easily have 
> provided a generic back end & library.

I'm not o sure about that. For example, I did some development for BlackBerry devices, which don't have a native code generator (or spec) available outside RIM. All external BlackBerry applications must be deployed in Java. This has the added advantage of security and reliability, since there's no way an errant application can break the entire device, and allows RIM to change the instruction set architecture at any time.

Of course, that distribute-binaries-as-source thing would work, too, but imagine sticking a whole lexer/parser/semantic/code generator on a mobile device... that processing power is better spent actually executing the application.