D is crap

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 11 July 2016 at 11:59:51 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:
> On Monday, 11 July 2016 at 09:30:37 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> Lisp or SmallTalk)[1]. D couldn't have afforded not to have GC 
>> when it first came out. It was expected of a (new) language to 
>> provide GC by then - and GC had become a selling point for new 
>> languages.
>
> This is not true, it is just wishful thinking. D was harmed by 
> the GC, not propelled by it. I am not missing any point, sorry. 
> Just go look at what people who gave up on D claim to be a 
> major reason, the GC scores high...


No. Having GC attracts more users, because they either explicitly 
want it of they don't care for the overhead. To have GC was 
definitely a good decision. What was not so good was that it was 
not optional with a simple on/off switch. Neither was it a good 
idea not to spend more time on ways to optimize GC, so it was 
comparatively slow.

Keep in mind that the no GC crowd has very specialized needs 
(games, real time systems). Then again, to win this crowd over 
from C/C++ is not easy, regardless. And ... let's not forget that 
GC is often used as a handy excuse not to use D. "You don't use D 
because of a, b, c or because of GC?" - "Yeah, that one."

I bet you that if D hadn't had GC when it first came out, people 
would've mentioned manual memory management as a reason not to 
use GC. I never claimed that D was _propelled_ by GC, but that it 
was a feature that most users would expect. Not having it would 
probably have done more harm than having it.

By the way, have you ever designed a language, I'd love to see 
how it would look like ;)

[snip]