C++, D: Dinosaurs?

[Piotrek]

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> [...]The concept of domain-specific languages is 
> ultra-trendy these days (probably promoted by the same knuckleheads that 
> hailed things like pure-OO, pure-functional, and Extreme Programming as 
> silver bullets). But I consider domain-specific languages to be purely a 
> symptom of a strong need for a better general purpose language.
> 

Totally agree. At my point of view it looks excacly the same. I started 
with pascal then moved to c/c++ at university but I abandoned it because 
of its ugliness and non intuitive application development. Then I found 
working with PHP/JAVA much easier but I was disappointed by its 
fundamentals (please let me forget about PHP as a programming language). 
And when I was left without any hope I saw a Bright light. :D

For me D takes the best of everything I have seen. Of course it isn't 
perfect but takes the right course and I want to be aboard.

> Let's face it: programming needs and uses have expanded so much over the 
> last decade or so that C/C++ hasn't really been a "general purpose" language 
> for quite some time. These days it's a systems/performance language instead. 
> True, all the attempts at retrofitting it with modern-ish features to try to 
> keep it general-purpose have turned it into a regular frankenstein's monster 
> of a language, but that does nothing to disprove the viability of general 
> purpose languages in general. It just demonstrates that C++ needs a reboot 
> (hence: D). Heck, D is already far better as a general-purpose language than 
> C/C++ (although it's still not quite there yet).

Those words are mine (I wish) ;)

> I'd *much* rather use a true general-purpose language (which, again, C++ is 
> no longer an example of) than muck around with 500 different languages for 
> every stupid little thing.
> 
> For example, have you ever tried doing web development? You can't 
> realistically do anything nontrivial without tripping over at least handful 
> of different, essentially domain-specific, languages: ECMAScript, (T)SQL, 
> (X)HTML, XML, CSS, and either PHP, ASP/VBScript, ASP.NET/C#, Python or Ruby. 
> And that's just the bare minimum for any non-trivial web site. For one 
> thing, most of those are great examples of the fact that domain-specific 
> languages do nothing to prevent piss-poor language design. But besides that: 
> Conceptually, web development is one of the most trivial forms of 
> programming out there. But the domain-specific language-soup realities of it 
> have turned what should have been trivial into one of the programming 
> world's biggest pains-in-the-ass. It's an absolute mess. 

That's why I'm planing to use D + Tango + Mango and blow up everything 
else including existing http servers. (I had also questions in my mind 
why the hell databases relies on SQL so much).

Cheers