D vs. C#

[Walter Bright]

Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> With .NET, you can derive from a class in a compiled assembly without
> having access to the source. You just add the assembly in the
> project's dependencies and import the namespace with "using". In C,
> you must use the included .h files (and .h files are a pain to
> maintain anyway since you must maintain the declaration and
> implementation separately, but that's not news to you).

Yes, but that's a language bug, not anything inherent to native compilers.

> You must
> still use .lib and .di files with D and such - although they can be
> automated in the build process, it's still a hassle.

D has the potential to do better, it's just that its a bit mired in the 
old school.


> Besides that, statically linking in the runtime seems to be a too
> common practice, as "DLL hell" has been a discouragement for
> dynamically-linked libraries in the past (side-by-side assemblies is
> supposed to remedy that though). I guess the fault is not in the DLLs
> themselves, it's how people and Microsoft used them...

The solution to this is to have automatically generated versions for 
each build of a DLL/shared library. I imagine that .net does the same 
thing for assemblies.