D as a betterC a game changer ?

Jonathan M Davis newsgroup.d at jmdavisprog.com
Mon Dec 25 12:11:46 UTC 2017


On Monday, December 25, 2017 11:18:58 Joakim via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> To clarify Mike's point, the dmd backend was taken from the
> existing dmc C/C++ compiler, which started in the '80s.  It
> wasn't written in D because D didn't exist back then!  The
> backend could be turned into normal GC'ed D, but Walter still
> supports dmc and I guess it's easier to just port it all to
> betterC D.

Using betterC, it's fairly easy to port a program over in a piecemeal
manner, whereas that's a royal pain if you're using the full language and
druntime. Once the port to D is completed, then normal D can be used without
problems.

Honestly, I don't think that there's really any reason to use betterC for
most programs, but it does make calling D from C much easier, so folks who
are in an environment where they need to call D from C/C++ may want to use
betterC to make that more reasonable (though at the cost of a number of
useful language features). I expect that there will be some indivuals who
will latch onto betterC for one reason or another, but I also expect that
the vast majority of D programmers aren't going to want to put up with its
restrictions. Personally, I don't see much point in using D if I'm going to
be restricted to betterC. At that point, I'd much rather just use C++. I
might port something using betterC, but that's the most that I'd ever
consider. I actually want a fully featured language, and D without a runtime
is doomed to be severely crippled even if it doesn't have to be quite as
crippled as it is now.

- Jonathan M Davis



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