Dscanner - DCD - Dfix ... Editor support or the lack of it.

[Benny]

On Friday, 26 January 2018 at 21:59:51 UTC, Dgame wrote:
> You are not alone. The existing D-Tools are either really bad 
> or do not work propely/not out of the box. And I have more 
> important things to do than trying to setup the tools. Maybe 
> someone likes that, but not me. But I have to say that I've 
> used more or less successfully Visual-D and Mono-D a few years 
> ago. But neither of the tools can keep up in any way with Tools 
> for Rust/C++/C#/Java/PHP. The existence of a good IDE which 
> works out of the box without annoying setup procedures is 
> crucial for the success of a language nowadays. That's one of 
> the reason why I've moved on. I went back to C++ and nowadays 
> to Rust. C++ is not that clean as D but the Tool support is 
> crucial for anyone who wants to use the language for other than 
> some hobby stuff.

I have been comparing a bunch of languages and there IDEs this 
afternoon to see how fast and efficient there latest version work 
( mostly inspired by the other topics of popular languages ). 
Wanted to avoid the whole "grass is greener on the other side" as 
a way to be fair.

* Rust: Jetbrain IntelliJ + Rust plugin.
It looks like it has become a official supported plugin by 
Jetbrain. Works perfectly out of the box. Impressive results and 
issue hinting.

* Crystal: Visual Studio Code + OmniPascal plugin
Color syntax but nothing else. No surprise, Crystal has no 
Windows compiler so no way to link any meaningful out output on 
Windows.

* Pascal: Yes, freaking pascal! Visual Studio Code + OmniPascal 
plugin
Impressive! Impressive features, type hinting and more.

* C#: Visual Studio Code + C# ( OmniSharp ).
No surprise there. Lots of functionality.

* Go: Visual Studio Code + Go Plugin.
Again, no surprise. Lots of functionality.

Did not try the Jetbrain Gogland IDE because that is a official 
product so of course Go will work great in that one.

* Julia: Visual Studio Code + Julia Plugin.
Took a bit more configuring but again more functionality then i 
ever got from any D plugin.

* Swift: Visual Studio Code + Swift Plugin.
Like Crystal, no Windows version and limited to Color Syntax.

... got kind of fed up testing because everything that you expect 
to works on Windows, worked out of the box ( at best with oa 
Julia one needed to add the compiler path ).

If nobody has figured out the trend by now, every language that 
has a windows compiler in any form has no major issues to offer 
extended functionality ( or even basic ). Those that do not have 
windows compiler, fall flat as expected.

The exception being D that despite having multiple windows 
compilers offer ( in my case ) no functionality beyond color 
syntax. I do not count the VSC ability to list every keyword in 
your document.

Another trend that i noticed from the other thread is that all 
the above mentioned languages all outperform D in github user 
activity ranking ( inc the very young one's ). D has always 
struck me more as a corporate language ( one that is less focused 
upon open source ). Maybe there is a more open community focus on 
the other platforms and this drives more interaction and pushes 
better plugin support?

In other words, at best it take me half a hour to get proper 
editor support in the above mentioned languages ( that offer it 
in Windows ). Where as D ... well, its been a long topic and 
anybody who read the first post knows the results. Lets see:

* 8+ hours: Struggling with 4 plugins and no results. And still 
waiting on one of the plugin authors his feedback as he also has 
a life.

* 5 hours: Seven languages with 5 working perfectly and 2 POSIX 
languages with the expected no result. Yes, that includes the 
time to download all the compilers, get examples and other stuff.

Guess the 8+ hour language ;)