What Makes A Programming Language Good

[Jacob Carlborg]

On 2011-01-20 13:12, Daniel Gibson wrote:
> Am 20.01.2011 00:54, schrieb Adam D. Ruppe:
>> Jesse Phillips wrote:
>>> You can have the author release packaged libraries for developers
>>> to use and the author should do this. So this begs the question of
>>> what is the repository for?
>>
>> It's so you have a variety of libraries available at once with
>> minimal hassle when you are originally writing something.
>>
>> I really don't care about those libraries' implementation details.
>> I just want it so when I type "import something.lib;" in my
>> program it actually works. If something.lib's author wants to
>> use other.thing, great, I just don't want to think about it
>> anymore than I think about his private classes or functions.
>>
>>
>>> Why is the tool going out to different URLs and downloading files
>>> when you are supposed to use the pre-built lib?
>>
>
> Pre-built libs aren't all that useful anyway, for several reasons:
> 1. Templates
> 2. different operating systems: there would have to be pre-built libs
> for Windows, OSX, Linux and FreeBSD (if not even more)
> 3. different architectures: there would have to be pre-built libs for
> x86, AMD64 and, thanks to GDC and LDC, for about any platform supported
> by Linux..

And then one library for each of the compilers (ldc, gdc and dmd), do 
the math and one will soon realize that this won't work. Although 
pre-built libraries that only work for a given platform might work.

> Just provide source, so people can build their own libs from it or just
> compile the sources like their own source files. This can still be done
> automagically by the build-tool/package management.
>
> Cheers,
> - Daniel


-- 
/Jacob Carlborg