[OT] Windows dying

[jmh530]

On Wednesday, 1 November 2017 at 18:59:21 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe 
wrote:
>
> Windows 32 bit is the special one - it is the ONLY platform 
> where D works out of the box without additional downloads. 
> That's one reason why I advocate it for just playing around - 
> it just works.
>
> On ALL other platforms for dmd: Win64, Linux 32/64, Mac, 
> freebsd, you require additional downloads from the OS vendor to 
> build your program.
>
> The only difference is size of the download from the OS vendor, 
> and odds that it was already installed by something else. But 
> it is the same idea - you use the OS vendor's linker and system 
> libs to facilitate interoperability with other language code.

DMD with the default -m32 is great for just playing around. No 
Windows D user would deny it. I compile with that far more than 
with -m64 (or any LDC for that matter). It's only really when you 
need -m64 (or -m32mscoff for that matter), and I mean really need 
it, that one needs to bother with Visual Studio. Perhaps that's 
part of the frustration. Things are so easy with the default and 
so frustrating when you have to make the change. For me, that 
point comes when trying to call C libraries in D. Downloading 
Visual Studio and installing it is a one-time cost, but getting C 
libraries working with D is something I don't do enough to 
remember the tricks. If the C library is compiled with Visual 
Studio, then you have to use the VS linker. But it usually will 
be something MinGW or Cygwin. From there, you might have some 
series of steps that I would never remember and always need to 
google to get it working. That's the frustrating part. Installing 
Visual Studio is annoying, but not really a huge deal for me in 
the grand scheme of things.