Had another 48hr game jam this weekend...

[Ramon]

Someone wrote sth along the line of "How egotistical! Some want
this and want that. D doesn't get better or more popular by
wanting ever more things".

I'll very soon begin to work on a project. Originally it was
planned to it in Ada. Relevant feature sets are roughly equal
with D offering a little more (like comfortable unittests) and
Ada being well proven.

I *want* to go D. And I would, of course, gladly tell everyone
who doesn't run away fast enough that our application is
developed in D.(The application will quite probably have a good,
even international visibility but by no means be major or widely
known. The major (and very well useable, not "crippled") part of
it will be free, btw.)

In other words: One can contribute also by using (and talking
about) D - not only by defending it teeth and claws or by writing
code for or around D itself.

Here is my current resumee:

- dmd not debuggable -> not an acceptable solution, no matter how
fast it compiles.
- gdc possibly still buggy (Disclaimer: Probably it was just bad
luck that I fell over a bug (not even an important one) and am a
little wary now - No offense intended. I'm immensely grateful
that with gdc there is an alternative and, even better, GDB
*works* with gdc - hurray!!)
- gdc (2): I have to either use an old version (4.63) or build it
myself along with gcc, which is a major hurdle
-ldc not yet tried. Dunno.
- Windoze stuff not yet tried. But the mere thought that D might
force me to use Windoze puts dark shadows over D, sorry.

- IDEs: Some existing. Using geany with good support for D is
perfectably acceptable (Me not liking fat IDEs anyway). It comes
down to a very acceptable editor with some gadgets (like class
viewer) with a small engine driving builds and a debugger
interface (or do I mix that up with Code:Blocks?))
Summary: Good starting grounds. Perfection and dreamland can be
reached later.

- libraries: Looks between regrettable (lots of old/broken/pre
alpha stuff) and uncomfortable (equals increased development
cost/time).
Major problem: No readily available mechanism (I know of and
would trust/use) to 2/4 automate C lib binding.

The situation being that I must, and pretty soon, make a
decision, it - for me - comes down to:

- dmd would be used for coverage and doc and possibly profiling
but not for compilation.
- Can I trust the GDC guys, are they professionals? My impression
so far: Yes. That's important to me because GDC clearly is the
compiler I'd go with.
- Will they provide at least GDC 4-7 binaries (they did for GDC
4-6 (debian)) - dunno. Would be a very big Plus.
- IDE *is* a major issue for general language uptake. For myself
though I'd have a quite acceptable base. Worst case: Fumble and
finetune in Scite engine for D. No sweat.

As for libs and stuff D looks lousy and unorganized. For me
that's not a problem, I'll bite and find my way through. For
general language uptake and acceptance though that's about as
attractive as the more remote corner of a used car shop.

Red line: When in a project I have to "fight" the project - not
the tools; those must simply work reliably.

The community seems quite OK. Very little flames and hate, quite
professional with a tendency to be friendly; they strongly seem
to prefer to discuss and elaborate minute details, work-arounds
and hacks, and seems to react rather pissed to any critical
remark on D, but I feel that there would basically always an
answer if one had a question.
Andrei (sorry, the core people *are* important because they shape
language and community) is a matter for itself and W. Bright
would rather discuss the availability of TV programs than to
answer, even when addressed directly, if he doesn't like someone
or consider him unworthy because being newb or whatever. The
layer around them though seems more open and accessible. Good
enough, no, actually even quite good.

In summary, my resumee is quite positive (if with quite some
bumps) but *THE* go or break issue is debugging with dmd and GDC
being reliable. For the former I don't hold my breath, for the
latter I'm quite positively looking ahead.

Now destroy me. A+ -R