D vs. C#

[Charles D Hixson]

Walter Bright wrote:
> 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
>>...
> 
> 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.

I'm not sure what the reason it, but programs in languages 
running on VM's (or otherwise interpreted) seem to be much 
better at introspection.  This isn't just Java.  LISP had to 
work quite hard to become a compiled language, but 
interpreters were available quickly, and the ability to do 
introspection easily during interpretation was a large chunk 
of the reason.

N.B.:  This doesn't mean that compiled languages can't 
introspect.  After all, if you analyze everything down to 
assembler, it's all the same instructions.  But it appears to 
be a lot more difficult.