Conspiracy Theory #1

[dsimcha]

== Quote from Sean Kelly (sean at invisibleduck.org)'s article
> retard Wrote:
> > Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:47:46 -0800, Bill Baxter wrote:
> >
> >
> > > It seems to me that MS expects C++ to go the way of FORTRAN and
> > > COBAL.  Still there, still used, but by an increasingly small number of
> > > people for a small (but important!) subset of things.  Note how MS still
> > > hasn't produced a C99 compiler. They just don't see it as relevant to
> > > enough people to be financially worthwhile.
> >
> > Even the open source community is using more and more dynamic languages
> > such as Python on the desktop and Web 2.0 (mostly javascript, flash,
> > silverlight, php, python) is a strongly growing platform. I expect most
> > of the every day apps to move to the cloud during the next 10 years.
> > Unfortunately c++ and d missed the train here. People don't care about
> > performance anymore. Even application development has moved from library
> > writing to high level descriptions of end user apps that make use of high
> > quality foss/commercial off-the-shelf components. Cloud computing, real-
> > time interactive communication, and fancy visual look are the key
> > features these days.
> Performance per watt is a huge issue for server farms, and until all this talk
of low power, short pipeline, massively parallel computing is realized (ie. true
"cloud computing"), systems languages will have a very definite place in this
arena.  I know of large-scale Java projects that go to extreme lengths to avoid
garbage collection cycles because they take upwards of 30 seconds to complete,
even on top-of-the-line hardware.

Yes, and similarly, when I write code to do some complicated processing of gene
expression data or DNA sequences, and it uses RAM measured in gigabytes, I go to
similar lengths to avoid GC for similar reasons.  (That and false pointers.)  It's
not unique to server space.  The reason I still use D instead of C or C++ is
because, even if I'm using every hack known to man to avoid GC, it's still got
insane metaprogramming capabilities, and it's still what std.range and
std.algorithm are written in.