Study: build times for D programs

[Walter Bright]

On 7/24/2012 11:02 AM, Guillaume Chatelet wrote:
> By the way, it reminds me of the 'Computer Language Benchmarks Game'
> (http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/). I know D is not welcome aboard but
> couldn't we try do run the game for ourself so to have some more data ?

Small programs are completely inadequate for getting any reasonable measure of 
compiler speed. Even worse, they can be terribly wrong.

(Back in the olden days, when men were men and and the sun revolved about the 
earth, everyone raved about Borland's compilation speed. In tests I ran myself, 
I found that it was fast, right up until you hit a certain size of source code, 
maybe about 5000 lines. Then, it fell off a cliff, and compile speed was 
terrible. But hey, it looked great in those tiny benchmarks.)

The people who care about compile speed are compiling gigantic programs, and 
smallish ones can and do exhibit a very different performance profile.

DMDScript is a medium sized program, not a gigantic one, but it's the best we've 
got for comparison.