Idea #1 on integrating RC with GC

[Manu]

On 10 February 2014 18:59, <"Ola Fosheim Grøstad\"
<ola.fosheim.grostad+dlang at gmail.com>"@puremagic.com> wrote:

> On Monday, 10 February 2014 at 04:26:10 UTC, Manu wrote:
>
>> The only company I know of that has made a commercial commitment to D is a
>>> AAA games company...
>>>
>>
> Unfortunately a AAA games company is not setting down the goal post for D.
> As long as the leads for the project have as their primary interests:
> non-real-time stuff and STL-like-libraries things won't develop in your
> (and mine and Fransescos) direction.
>

I'm confused. A couple of posts ago, you seemed to be annoyed at me for
consistently raising games as a target application space that was
unrealistic, or not 'down to earth', or some fairly niche and irrelevant
target workload.
Video games is a bigger industry than the movie industry. Casual/phones
have captured a large slice in recent years, but the rest of the pie is
almost entirely games consoles, which I don't think is a diminishing
industry so much as the casual/phone space is rather growing the pie in
overall volume. The industry is expanding as a whole.

Yes both subsets of the industry are important, but in the casual space
there are already other realistic and established languages as options, and
D is much further away from use on those industries; mature
cross-compilers, OS support, cross-language support, etc are all
requirements for casual/phone games in D.

It won't happen until the leads of the project COMMIT to a MEASURABLE goal
> and a major effort is made to meet that goal. That means putting other
> goals aside until that measurable goal has been met.


I don't think anyone in the D community really has that power. If Walter
were to dictate direction that was unpopular enough, the developer base
would promptly dissolve.

I agree in some sense, that I would like to see some set of specific goals
agreed and targeted with each release cycle. Ideally, with a roadmap
towards particular goalposts which may enable new usage spaces.
It may be possible that Walter and Andrei might have that sort of rallying
power, but if the goal is not of interest to the majority of contributors,
it just won't happen regardless how many people post happy thoughts about
the goal. Contributing to D is, in some way, a form of recreation for
contributors.

 Sorry, I obviously mean, "the only *games* company..."
>>
>
> Yeah, but that games company needs to commit to taking a lead role so that
> the goal post and vision changes in that direction.
>

Are you saying I don't complain enough? :) (at least, last year before I
left)
I would never want to assert authority on the language direction on behalf
of a single company, like you say, it's a niche target, although a very big
niche which I think will really benefit from D.
I just make sure that people never forget that the niche exists, what the
requirements are, and that tends to result in those targets being factored
into conversations and designs.

 And people seem to forget promptly after every single time I repeat myself:
>>  * The GC frequency of execution is directly proportional to the amount of
>> _free memory_. In console games; NONE.
>>  * The length of the associated pause is directly proportional to the
>> amount of memory currently in use. In console games; all of it.
>>
>> This doesn't only describe games, it describes any embedded environment.
>>
>
> I've already stated that I don't believe in using D for anything
> multi-media.
>

That's a shame, I see that as one of it's greatest (yet unrealised)
potentials. What are some other reasons anyone would reach for a native
language these days?
If it's not an operating system, or some enterprising web service... what
else commands native hardware access and performance than embedded
development in a *highly* aggressive and competitive industry?

It is not part of the project vision to be good at that from what I am
> seeing, and I am not going to believe it is going to be good for that until
> the project leads commit to measurable goals.
>
> The leads believe in meritocracy, that means the project will flail around
> in any direction that is fun. That means there are no rails. There is no
> reason to pull or push a train that is not on rails. To get D to be a true
> better C++ you need a concerted effort.
>

Yeah, I agree in theory... I think the short-term goals need to be set by
the target requirements of the people actually using it, then they can
produce stories about how it went well for them.
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