[xmlp] the recent garbage collector performance improvements

Manu turkeyman at gmail.com
Thu Feb 2 16:20:44 PST 2012


On 2 February 2012 21:20, dsimcha <dsimcha at yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, 2 February 2012 at 18:55:02 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
>
>> On 2/2/12, Manu <turkeyman at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> PC's are an endangered and dying species...
>>>
>>
>> Kind of like when we got rid of cars and trains and ships once we
>> started making jumbo jets.
>>
>> Oh wait, that didn't happen.
>>
>
> Agreed.  I just recently got my first smartphone and I love it.  I see it
> as a complement to a PC, though, not as a substitute.  It's great for when
> I'm on the go, but when I'm at home or at work I like a bigger screen, a
> full keyboard, a faster processor, more memory, etc.  Of course smartphones
> will get more powerful but I doubt any will ever have dual 22 inch monitors.
>

You're obviously a nerd though, hanging out in a place like this :)

There is no small number of people who use their PC's purely for
communication, facebook, emails, skype, etc. and there are well documented
trends showing more and more people are performing those tasks exclusively
from their phones/portable devices. They are now, already, ex-pc-users.
That trend is accelerating (I wish I could remember where the slides were
>_<)

My girlfriend for instance, I bought an iPad to do some dev on... she
confiscated it one day after I showed her the eBook app, which she loved,
and promptly threw away her whole hard copy library...
Funnily though, and completely unconsciously on her part, I haven't seen
her open her computer more than once or twice since that time. It has
everything on it she ever used her computer for, it's more portable and
convenient, fits in her bag (takes it to class), and it even has a recipe
app and conveniently sits in the bench while she's baking :)
I have had the same discussion in the office, and I'm not the only one who
has seem a similar transition first hand.

Most people aren't computer nerds... they don't give 2 shits about
computers, it's just a tool, and the second something more practical or
convenient comes along for their purposes, they'll use that instead.
That time has already past, the trend is accelerating quickly, the snowball
is rolling, even REAL nerds are starting to slip. (I must confess, I'm
seriously tempted by a transformer prime...)


I think the MOST interesting part about this trend though, is that many of
these people who used their laptop/pc *exclusively* for communication have
now discovered these mobile app stores, and they're being exposed to apps
that do all sorts of things. Far more than they ever did on their PC's of
days past. Even games; people who would say they have no interest in video
games at all are being shown to be picking up simple mobile/tablet games at
an alarming rate.
This is a huge and fast growing software market, almost all the software is
written from scratch (read: developers *could* choose D if it were
available), and D should be a part of it!
The language landscape in this space is very turbulent at the moment, but
it will settle, and D needs to be in it before it does, or it will miss the
boat.
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