D is almost the exact language I need...

[Charles Hixson via Digitalmars-d]

On 07/03/2016 01:31 AM, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 7/3/2016 12:21 AM, Charles Hixson via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> I do wish that phobos included a D wrapper around SQLite,
>
> There was one recently announced.
Thanks.  I missed the announcement.
>
>
>> I'd also like to be able to depend on class finalizers being called.
>> Sometimes I wrap a class in a struct just so I can depend on the 
>> finalizer.
>
> That's the way to do it.
It works, but it's a bit of added friction when I'm coding. Especially 
if I need access to the internals of the class...then I need to manually 
mangle the names.  (I'm not implying I need to match the compiler's 
version of the name.)
>
>
>> The last time I checked DDoc stopped working after encountering an 
>> extern "C"
>> block in a file.
>
> I'm not aware of this. Is there a bug report filed?
I wasn't sure it was a bug.  And it may not still be present. Since I 
figured out the cause I've just put the C externals in a separate file.
>
>
>> DDoc could use considerable work in formatting. I'd like to be able 
>> to globally control the font attributes
>> of classes, structs, aliases, enums.
>
> DDoc relies on having a user-supplied xxx.ddoc file to provide the 
> formatting, css, etc.
I wasn't able to figure out how to highlight classes differently from 
structs, etc.  I have built small .ddoc files to make custom changes, 
but that was for defining macros.
>
>
>> I'd like to be able to document private
>> routines or not depending on a (compiler) switch.
>
> I'm not sure what the point of that would be. Private functions 
> shouldn't be called by anything outside of the file, and you already 
> have the file open in the editor when working on it. But you can 
> always submit an enhancement request for it on bugzilla.
That's not for export.  The documentation is written for me to use a 
month or more later.
>
>
>> Most of my needs are for run time flexibility rather than for more 
>> compile time
>> flexibility.  E.g., I'd like to be able to declare a statically sized 
>> array from
>> a parameter.
>
> You can do it more or less with alloca(). I know C99 has this feature, 
> and some people swear by it, but I just don't think it pulls its weight.
Yes, I could manually allocate them.  But that adds a lot of 
resistance.  If they are too much effort, well, OK, but that's an 
example of the kind of thing that I want that D doesn't address.  No 
language does everything, and D is one of the two or three languages I 
consider best.  Python is another, but slow.  Vala shows promise, but 
it's not portable, and the development is glacial. Also it's poorly 
documented.  It's advantage is it's fast AND has a lot of wrapped 
libraries.  (But last I checked it seemed FAR from 1.0.)
>
>
>> I feel sort of guilty for "complaining" this way when I've been 
>> devoting all my
>> efforts to my own projects, but you did, essentially, invite comments.
>
> If something good can come from it, it's good.
My chances of getting any usable result from my work are *very* low.  
OTOH, if I do the social payoff will be huge.  So I persevere.  Except 
when I get discouraged.