Linux Agora D thread

Walter Bright newshound2 at digitalmars.com
Fri Oct 22 02:42:49 PDT 2010


retard wrote:
> What annoys me the most in pro D articles is the author usually tries to 
> prove (in a naive way) that despite all the deficiencies the language and 
> tool chain is better even *now* than all of the competition or that the 
> *potential* is so high that the only logical conclusion is to move to D 
> *now*. Clearly this isn't the case. These kind of articles give people 
> the wrong impression. I'm just trying to bring up the *pragmatic* point 
> of view.
> 
> For instance, I'm starting the implementation of a 64-bit systems/
> application programming project *now*. The implementation phase will last 
> N months (assume optimistic waterfall process model here). How many weeks/
> months must the N at least be to make D a feasible option?

The Linux 64 bit dmd is well on its way to completion. The library compiles, and 
simple programs work. I'm working my way through the test suite (which is fairly 
extensive).

> A typical lead developer / project manager has to make decisions based on 
> some assumptions. E.g.
> 
> Platform      Implementation  Developer  Performance  Platform
>               Time            Market     Index        Risk factor
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> C/x64 Linux   12 months       good       100          medium
> C++/x64 Linux 10 months       ok         110          high
> Java/x64 JVM  8 months        excellent  80           low
> C#/Windows 64 7 months        very good  85           low
> Python/Linux  4-5 months      very good  30           low
> D             12+ months?     very bad   80-115 ?     very high
> 
> The metrics are imaginary. The point was to show that language goodness 
> isn't a single scalar value.
> 
> Why I think the D platform's risk is so high is because the author 
> constantly refuses to give ANY estimates on feature schedules.

Would you believe them if I did?


> There's no 
> up-to-date roadmap anywhere. The bugzilla voting system doesn't work. 
> Lots of production ready core functionality is missing (for example how 
> long has d2 distribution had a commercial quality xml framework?)

That depends on if your project needs an xml framework or not. Worst case, which 
is far from bad, you can always connect to any C library. Googling "c xml 
library" turned up several on the front page.


> For example gcc has had 64-bit C/C++ support quite long. But it took 
> several years to stabilize. The implementation of a 64-bit X-ray machine 
> firmware in D cannot begin one week after 64-bit DMD is announced.

It's foolish to assume any compiler is reliable if you're going to be writing 
critical software. Assuming perfection in any part of such a system is a 
thorough misunderstanding of how to create reliable systems.

I believe it is also an error to require a tool be perfect before you can pick 
it up. All that is required is that its benefit/cost is higher than that of 
other tools. D has quite a few advantages that are available with it right now.


More information about the Digitalmars-d mailing list