D and Java [was Re: The DUB package manager]

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 05:12:59 +0000
Russel Winder <russel at winder.org.uk> wrote:

> On Sun, 2013-02-24 at 15:49 +0400, Dmitry Olshansky wrote:
> […]
> > You missed the point that these have to be the *real* integer
> > constants starting from 0. No frigging magic classes please.
> 
> I am not sure why they have to be hardware integers, this is a
> JVM-based system and hardware integers do not exist. I feel a
> contradiction between requirements and technology here!
> 

JVM runs on hardware therefore hardware integers clearly do exist
whether JVM chooses to expose them or block them.


> Safe Enum pattern/idiom is indeed all about the representation of the
> symbols being instances of a class. But small immutable objects are
> very cheap these days on the JVM.
> 

As cheap as a real native primitive?

> It is possible Java 9 or Java 10 will remove the primitive types
> completely so that all variables are reference types leaving it to the
> JVM to handle all boxing and unboxing internally thus making things a
> lot more efficient and faster.

How could that possibly be *more* efficient and faster?


> 
> Go has eschewed all dynamic linking and is making this a feature. But
> it has a mechanism for being able to call C from libraries. Python
> has a mechanism for calling C from shared libraries. D is at a
> disadvantage.
> 

D is also able to call C. And it doesn't pretend that missing dynamic
lib support is a "feature". D is certainly not at any disadvantage
here.

> 
> Go has managed to attract volunteer labour to write in Go new versions
> of everything previously written in C other than actual OSs. But even
> there people are beginning to write OSs in Go.
> 

FWIW, People have already written OS in D.