D is crap

Chris via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Fri Jul 8 10:04:29 PDT 2016


On Friday, 8 July 2016 at 16:08:42 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> On Friday, 8 July 2016 at 12:46:03 UTC, Chris wrote:
>
>> As for GC, it's hard to tell. When D was actually (not 
>> hypothetically) created, GC was _the_ big thing. Java had just 
>> taken off, people were pissed off with C/C++, programming and 
>> coding was becoming more and more common. Not having GC might 
>> actually have been a drawback back in the day. People would 
>> have complained that "Ah, D is like C++, no automatic memory 
>> management, I might as well stick to C++ or go for Java!" So 
>> no, I think D is where it is, because things are like they 
>> are, and "what if" discussions are useless. D has to keep on 
>> keeping on, there's no magic.
>
> Yep. If you're going to pick any feature to use to sell a new 
> language, lack of GC is the worst. The only ones that care (and 
> it's a small percentage) are the ones that are least likely to 
> switch due to their existing tools, libraries, and knowledge.

True. The last sentence is something to bear in mind whenever we 
discuss attracting more people. If someone is really into C++ 
bare metal micro-optimization kinda stuff, we won't win him/her 
over with "no GC". As you said, they're the least likely to 
switch for said reasons. To be able to opt out of GC is still 
important, but it's not that we will attract thousands and 
thousands of new users because of that.


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