ddmd

[dsimcha]

== Quote from Denis Koroskin (2korden at gmail.com)'s article
> dolive Wrote:
> > thanks£¬great work !
> > make an all out effort !
> I've implemented 127 missing methods (958 down to 831) yesterday.
> druntime compiles for a long time now (producing exactly the same binaries that
DMD produces) and I hope that Phobos will be there soon enough.
> I'd say it is 80% complete but still missing a few key components.
> I have only tested it on Win32, but Linux might work, too (the was some work
done to support it).
> Keep in mind that it is based on DMD2.032 which is almost a year old. It is also
D2-only ATM but I believe D1 support can be added with little effort since a lot
of the code is shared between the two versions with differences being versioned
out. I tried not to break anything as much as I could.
> I'll report more when I manage to compile Phobos entirely.

So when ddmd finally works fully, is Walter going to ditch the C++ codebase and
base the official DMD implementation on ddmd?  This would be great for a few reasons:

1.  The PR benefits of having a self-hosting D compiler.

2.  If Walter is eating his own dogfood, it will give him a better feel for what
bugs are high vs. low priority.

3.  If the productivity of D is higher than C++ by as much as we think it is, DMD
should progress faster after the switch is made.  I have my doubts, though, about
the productivity benefits of D when you throw legacy code translated from
old-school C++ into the mix.

4.  I probably speak for a lot of people on this one, and one reason why I don't
contribute to DMD even though I contribute to Phobos is because DMD is in C++ and
I don't know C++ thoroughly.  I know the basic syntax and semantics of the
language, but I'm not so familiar with the idioms, conventions, gotchas and corner
cases.  I'd be a lot more inclined to help out with DMD if it were written in D.