D benchmark code review

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On 15/12/13 12:40, "Ola Fosheim Grøstad" 
<ola.fosheim.grostad+dlang at gmail.com>"@puremagic.com wrote:
> If I write an engine in D and then want to port it to iOS…

Again, better I think to create first-class iOS support in D itself.  The 
alternative you suggest really feels like sticking one's feet in the flames to 
get out of having to do a firewalk ... :-)

> Actually, my arguments are not philosophical. They are pragmatic.

I was thinking more of your remarks about the semantics/syntax of templates 
here, although I concede that there is a practical side to that as well.  I 
agree that e.g. your concerns over real-time control and the GC are pragmatic, 
but that's only one use-case.  If that's the use-case that matters to you, then 
fair enough.

> D is not high level enough to be high level and not low level enough to give
> sufficient low level control.

I don't think that your remarks about the low-level side really stand up to 
scrutiny.  You can go as low as you like, but admittedly this may currently 
involve having to avoid much of the existing library functionality.

> Well, if it did support transactional memory and was more clearly dedicated
> towards low-level programming I would use it to have lock free concurrent
> programming in a relatively clean programming language.

If that's the use-case you're looking for, fair enough.  What I was concerned 
with was whether you were overlooking other use-cases that might potentially 
benefit you, because while looking at D through the prism of "C++ replacement" 
is valid, it misses a whole load of other things one can do with the language.