What does C++ do better than D? - StackOverflow.com

Jonathan M Davis jmdavisProg at gmx.com
Wed Aug 3 11:41:28 PDT 2011


> Jonathan M Davis Wrote:
> > There's a difference between a programming language which has reached an
> > appropriate level of maturity that people can use it without fear of
> > running into compiler bugs or issues with the spec and a language which
> > is frozen.
> 
> Maybe, they just enjoy running into mature language design bugs?
> 
> > No, D will likely never be frozen. It will continue to evolve.
> 
> So do C, C++, C#, Python... some motions in java domain... Even HTML does
> it.

I wasn't saying that they don't. They do (though C and C++ are notoriously 
slow about evolving). My point is that most programmers don't really expect a 
compiler to have bugs. Yes, like every other piece of software, even mature 
compilers have bugs, but with mature compilers, people generally either don't 
run into them or don't notice them (especially if they're subtle bugs). So, 
your average programmer is _not_ going to be happy with a compiler like dmd 
where you can run into bugs quite easily. And there is a very big difference 
between having a compiler which is constantly improving but which still has 
bugs which are easy to run into and a compiler which is constantly improving 
but where you rarely hit bugs in it when using it. C, C++. C#, Python, etc. 
are all mature enough that bugs in their compilers and standard libraries are 
going to be comparatively rare for most programmers. D is not at that point 
yet. _That_ is the point that we need to reach to really consider D to be a 
"finished product." It's getting there, and it will continue to evolve even 
once it's reached that point, but until it does reach that point, D will be a 
unacceptable to many programmers simply due to the quality of implementation 
issues.

- Jonathan M Davis


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