DMD - Windows

[Jim Hewes]

On 1/7/2012 4:40 AM, Manu wrote:
> On 7 January 2012 08:40, Nick Sabalausky <a at a.a> wrote:
>
> If by 'better' languages, you mean D, then I completely disagree. D
> *NEEDS* an IDE, just like all the rest... and in my opinion, even more
> so... here are some reasons I find it so annoying there isn't a quality
> VS integration for D (yet):


My job is primarily C++ Windows programming and I use Visual Studio. I 
think I agree with everything you said. In my case, I think of 
development tools as consisting of three components: (1) the language 
(2) the library/libraries including GUI, and (3) development 
environment, which includes debugger, IDE, etc. So even if the language 
is wonderful by itself, it's still not everything, and the total package 
may be less attractive than some other. I casually follow D progress 
because, besides just looking like a fun language to use, it seems to 
have all the elements that make a good language. But as you say, some 
things outside the language aren't quite there.

I use C# for small-to-medium, internal tools that have a GUI. It's great 
for that because of the IDE integration and also the .NET framework. The 
integration/intellisense is better for C# than C++. The biggest negative 
in the language is the lack of deterministic destruction, and that's one 
reason I'd favor D. (Also, having to get the .NET framework installed on 
users' systems is not so great, but not an issue just for internal 
tools. ) But the pros of IDE integration and .NET framework are greater 
to me than D language advantage. Visual D is helpful....but then there's 
the GUI library....

Not to get too far off topic, I'm the only one where I work who will use 
C#. I think some people simply hate Microsoft the company so much that 
they would not even fire up C# and try it once. They won't be caught 
liking it. And that's seems to be the case where I work as far as I can 
tell. Maybe D would be more well received than C# by such people if it 
integrated better with VS, I don't know. But there is always the issue 
with less widely used languages: if I write our company's main product 
in D, and if we then need to hire more people, I need to tell my boss we 
need to hire people that know D (or are at least willing and able pick 
it up) which are not as common. If anything at all goes wrong with D 
that wouldn't have gone wrong had we used C++, it's on me. No one ever 
got fired for buying IBM, lol. Sorry, I know we need to battle past that 
but I can't help mentioning it.