Idea #1 on integrating RC with GC

[Xavier Bigand]

Le 10/02/2014 13:04, "Ola Fosheim Grøstad" 
<ola.fosheim.grostad+dlang at gmail.com>" a écrit :
> On Monday, 10 February 2014 at 09:36:53 UTC, Manu wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Sorry about that. I have been following D since 2005, on and off, and
> kept waiting for the "better C++" to materialize so I can use it to do
> fun stuff with it (audio, 3D, raytracing etc).
>
> One hobby of mine is to read Intel/AMD CPU docs, raytracing papers and
> compiler stuff, and discussing those aspects and improving my
> understanding of those areas is fun. I am loosing hope in that direction
> for D, because I don't think D has anyone with a strong interest in
> project management that can drive it in that direction. The responses
> from the D leads shows signs, not of a lack of skills, but a lack of
> interest in project management "theory" (and unfortunately, that is an
> area where I know the theory quite well since I majored in that area).
>
> On the fun side I want what you want. I would love to see you be the
> third lead on D, to get a person that "falls to sleep thinking real
> time" into that position would make me believe in the project.
>
> On the "pay for bread" side I am looking at D from the perspective of
> having an alternative to Go on the server side. I guess that has made me
> "janus-faced" in this discussion. What would make me tilt in favour of
> Go instead of D, is that it has corporate backing and therefore give
> priority to production level stability. Even though I like the semantics
> of D better. Stability is important to me since I personally pay the
> price (literally) for technical flaws since I offer fixed priced solutions.
>
> Instead of A.A. and W.B. going defensive (and yes it is painful to see
> your child get a needle in the foot at the doctor to get that vaccine
> that will keep the child healthy in the long term) they should try to
> get someone into the team of leads that has an interest in software
> development process and software process improvement. Or at the very
> least, one person with real time focus.
>
> (Please note that I found it quite amusing that you claimed that I was
> ignorant of long running games, since I studied Anarchy Online from
> inception to end in a qualitative manner while trying to figure out the
> design properties of the design domain, from a system development
> perspective. You don't have to convince me, I do understand where you
> are coming from and enjoy reading about your perspective. ;^)
>
>> 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, unfortunately the revenue in the mobile app space is very low for
> the majority of developers which requires tools that make them very
> productive at the cost of technical quality. So lots of stuff is being
> done with cheap (and not really performant) tech to cut down on dev time.

Yes I can't tell you how hard it is. Plus editors that are much more 
concern historically by market than product quality, cause "mobile apps" 
are seen as cheap software. So few people take it seriously, maybe only 
Apple understand friendly applications have to be perfectly polished to 
be a commercial success.

> A more performant and productive language could certainly make a
> difference, but to get there you need to focus on that niche, otherwise
> it will take too many years to catch up with the alternatives (with
> their eco system). And the landscape keeps changing very quickly.
> Companies that offer 3rd party solutions fold all the time. So mobile
> devs are "jaded".
>
>> 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.
>
> Yes, some would leave, but others would join. Those who today look at D
> and say:
>
> - "This is kind of cool, but not quite there yet"
>
> - "when can I expect to see it land in the area where it makes me
> productive"
>
> - "is this cart worth pushing, can we actually make a significant
> improvement here or do I have to push this cart all by myself"
>
> I would imagine that there are more people sitting on the fence than not.
>
> What made Linux work out was that they were aiming for a well defined
> vision, Unix. Progress was easy to measure.
>
> What made Linux fail on the desktop that they did not have a well
> defined vision, so the community spread out on N alternatives and
> progress was hard to measure.
>
> This is a bit simplistic, but Open Source projects that does not have a
> strongly projected vision tends to wither and dissolve over time.
>
>> the goal. Contributing to D is, in some way, a form of recreation for
>> contributors.
>
> But you still need a clear vision and well defined goals, because for
> every "fun" bit there is 2 "unfun" bits. For every "excellent feature",
> you have to axe "2 nice to haves". (kind of)
>
>> 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.
>
> Actually, I think you have the passion to put forth a vision that could
> bring D to real time and thus make it a project that is making "fun"
> possible.
>
> With no "real time" person on the team I probably will take the "hobby
> focus" and enjoy discussing technological possibilites (such as the
> discussion we had about ref counting recently).
>
> If that makes A.A. upset. Great. He should be. I am implying that D
> needs leadership. He should take leadership. If he does not want to
> listen. Well, in that case I am not forcing him to read what I write.
> But pointing to github is pointing in the wrong direction. Github tracks
> missing bolts and nuts, not a skewed skeleton.
>
>> 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.
>
> I am perfectly cool with that. If AAA games is the vision. Good. My
> prime gripe is the lack of a clearly stated vision. I could go with any
> "system level" vision that is not covered by C++/C#.

Me too, and a lot of people in multimedia/game industry that follow D 
from far. I know few person interested that put their eyes back to C++ 
immediately cause of GC (it's maybe too soon).

>> 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?
>
> Scalable, low resource, servers. Servers that boot up real fast and
> handle many connections.
>
> I am currently musing at OSv. It is a kernel written in C++ that can run
> on top of KVM. Having something like Go or D on that platform could be
> interesting.
>
> Backing caches/databases/web services for low revenue mobile apps.
>
>> 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?
>
> Again, I don't disagree.  *smooch*
>
> ;)