D as A Better C?

[Adam Wilson]

On Tue, 11 Feb 2014 15:10:13 -0800, Xavier Bigand  
<flamaros.xavier at gmail.com> wrote:

> Le 11/02/2014 20:43, Walter Bright a écrit :
>> 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?
>
> If I correctly understand class will stay usable?
> So IMO it's just like if you said : "I want do a fork of D2 without GC".  
> If you are going to this way some people will certainly fork this  
> D2-BetterC version and add it a new standard library more like QtCore.
>
> In this case why not simply improve the D modularity and put features  
> you want remove as options? The main issue is about how phobos have to  
> manage memory, with or without GC, maybe both?
>
> If you want go to the modularity, it's really nice, but maybe it will  
> simpler to remove only GC and reboot phobos. Maybe it can help D  
> contributors to be focused on system aspects of language instead of  
> full-featured that can be reached only with a big community or  
> commercial patterns.
>

Classes rely on Object. It's better C, not C++. You'll still have structs.

-- 
Adam Wilson
GitHub/IRC: LightBender
Aurora Project Coordinator