Two Questions

[Marco Leise]

Am Tue, 04 Feb 2014 16:18:24 +0000
schrieb "Steve Teale" <steve.teale at britseyeview.com>:

> Popped into my head today.
> 
> What proportion of the D community develops on Linux of some 
> sort, and what proportion works with a 64 bit OS?
> 
> And why?

Linux 64-bit.

The reason for 64-bit is simple. It means less pressure on the
address space (e.g. no more running out of virtual memory),
more CPU registers, more recent instructions (SSE3 is supported
on all amd64 CPUs) as well as reworked calling conventions.
In other words: All the good stuff.

I don't quite remember my reason for Linux back then.
But it probably comes down to those:

o finding out why Linux was becoming more and more popular
o trying and learning something new and getting past the routine
  of just installing the latest version of Windows every 2 years
o having a configurable system with only the background
  services I need and know about

Now I could add:

o very low virus threat
o my current system came only with a 32-bit Vista, but on Linux
  I could leverage the 64-bit potential of my CPU
o the joy of witnessing how the desktop experience and drivers
  become improved over time on Linux (automatic input device
  discovery, audio equalizers, video thumbnails, etc.)
o the ease of getting GDC or LDC running, because LLVM and GCC
  are part of most Linux distributions
o D and most *nix systems share their preference for UTF-8,
  whereas on Windows you have to be more aware of code pages
  unless an API is wchar based. That ranges from
  stdout.writeln to APIs like OpenAL.

-- 
Marco