A summary of D's design principles

[retard]

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:22:09 -0400, bearophile wrote:
> Jesse Phillips:
> 
>> This is exactly how it should be marketed. It has the productivity of
>> Python, other dynamic languages, with the performance and power of a
>> natively compiled language.
> 
> Most programmers are able to see that's very false, today.
> 
> The main and maybe only advantage of D over C# is that it's
> multi-platform. But today the Web is very important, and D can't be used
> in browers.

I don't find it surprising that people here agree, when one is bashing 
other languages. However, please consider that C# is *higher* level 
language than D and that means it by definition has better portability to 
multiple platforms. You already have a C# virtual machine for all major 
operating systems. C# even runs on a browser (silverlight/moonlight).

> I think that if D wants a chance to not die as many other C-inspired
> languages have done in past, Walter needs lot of perseverance and to
> keep slowly improving D for 8-10 more years. When D will be "good
> enough" maybe some people will start to use it. But the implementation
> of D2 is currently far from that point.

D2 basically brought the number of supported libraries back to zero. It's 
almost like starting from scratch.

Jesse Phillips wrote:
> This is exactly how it should be marketed. It has the productivity of
> Python, other dynamic languages, with the performance and power of a
> natively compiled language.

I keep wondering, what language has the best productivity? How is it 
possible that people here STILL think that a single language could solve 
all problems. Is Python the right choice when creating interactive 
browser games? Is it the right choice for iPhone? Is it good for writing 
filesystem drivers? Is it good for high performance computing (vs FORTRAN 
et al).

Juanjo Alvarez wrote:
> As a newcomer after one week learning and toying with D my productivity
> is about 70% of the one I have with Python after 8 years doing Python,
> and higher than the one I've with Java or C++.

That's pretty awesome. You have maybe 0.001% of the libraries directly 
available, a buggy compiler, no 64-bit support, no formal spec etc. etc. 
And still you get about 70% of the productivity. And people say Python is 
maybe the most productive general purpose language out there. That's just 
incredible. My guess is, when D 2.0 is finally production ready, you're 
at least 100 times more productive than with Python. You can write 100000 
lines of code per day.