D as A Better C?

[ed]

On Tuesday, 11 February 2014 at 19:43:00 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> I've toyed with this idea for a while, and wondered what the 
> interest there is in something like this.
>
> The idea is to be able to use a subset of D that does not 
> require any of druntime or phobos - it can be linked merely 
> with the C standard library. To that end, there'd be a compiler 
> switch (-betterC) which would enforce the subset.
>
> (First off, I hate the name "better C", any suggestions?)
>
> The subset would disallow use of any features that rely on:
>
> 1. moduleinfo
> 2. exception handling
> 3. gc
> 4. Object
>
> I've used such a subset before when bringing D up on a new 
> platform, as the new platform didn't have a working phobos.
>
> What do you think?

I think a D subset language would be great.

We currently used D in a similar manner at work. Myself and a 
colleague often use D to prototype C/C++ code and then manually 
ported it across. The manual port imposes very tight constraints 
on what we can use from D but it is still better than C.

Even with the manual porting effort it speeds up development. The 
D compiler catches subtle bugs that creep into C code when 
deadlines are tight and the porting itself is great as a review 
process.

Cheers,
ed