D Language 2.0

[Walter Bright]

Jérôme M. Berger wrote:
> 	Embedded x86 is an oxymoron. Yes, I know, it exists (and btw, 8
> years ago they were still selling 486s as "embedded" processors) but
> mostly it doesn't need any special support (except possibly on the
> binary size front and even there 80k is nothing to the XXX megabytes
> used by the off-the-shelf OS+GUI+Web browser). Face it, there are
> two kinds of embedded developers:
> 
> - Those who want performance at very low power usage, who use ARM
> and C with a specialized OS. Those won't use D, period. Most of the
> time, they won't even use malloc or most of the C standard library
> (not saying they're right here, but I doubt you will change them);

I've looked at some embedded ARM evaluation boards that have Linux on 
them. Don't know much else about them. What about things like phones, 
game machines?


> - Those who only care about cost, who use x86 with Windows or Linux,
>  off-the-shelf software and an AJAX GUI and wonder why their systems
> are so slow and won't even run a full day before needing to be
> plugged to a power outlet. Those won't use D because "nobody uses
> it" and anyway it takes too much space (don't ask me to explain the
> logic behind that statement, I don't understand it either).
> 
> 	More seriously, I don't expect D to see much usage in the embedded
> market unless it becomes a huge success on the PC first (if then).
> But nothing you can do on the technical front will change that: it's
> mostly due to prejudice and preconceptions, not an actual
> cost-benefit evaluation of the language.


Yeah, I know, I run into the pseudo-problem all the time of D using 
garbage collection. I point out that you can call/use malloc in D as 
easily as you can in C++, but it makes no difference. They're convinced 
that gc will send their app to hell. <g>

I fault Java, C#, Python, etc., for some of this anti-gc silliness 
because those languages make it really hard to use malloc. They just 
don't believe that malloc is trivial to use in D.

I get this perspective even from career experts in programming.


> PS: At work, we mustn't use C++ because:
> - It's slow;
> - Its standard library is too big (100k);
> - In a future product, we might want to reuse this module and not
> have C++ (Oh, yes I didn't tell you that we *do* have the C++ stdlib
> in our products because the web browser they bought to run their
> HTML+Javascript+HTML+XML+C+XML+C+XML+C GUI uses it, but *we* aren't
> allowed to, fckng morons)

!!