Right now, what's the most important for the success and adoption

[Robert Fraser]

BCS Wrote:

> -IDE

You're the first one in the topic to mention this. I agree with you quite a bit on this, as all the current IDEs, while sufficient for writing code, still have their faults. For example, no IDE at present can do code completion with this:

mixin(ctFunction());

char[] ctFunction()
{
    return "struct Foo { int bar,baz; }";
}

Foo foo;
foo. // Here's where I'd want code completion to come up and suggest "bar" and "baz"
}

That's a trivial example, but all the compile-time stuff (templates, CTFE, mixins, etc.) is hard to debug properly because there's no real way to see the compile-time results. IDEs that have the compiler's complete semantic knowledge about these things can provide a whole host of features targeted at a mostly D-specific problem (I know C++ has templates, too, and I'm not sure what IDEs do to make working with them easier).

That's why I'm working on Descent (or, at least, will get back to it next week some time), with the hope that Descent can bridge the gap between very effective, feature-rich IDEs without full semantic knowledge (Mmrnhrnm or however you spell it is a really good example of it) and the compiler itself. Instant problem reporting and quick-fix functionality are also planned, so another piece to that bridge will be there as well.