Mobile is the new PC and AArch64 is the new x64

[Joakim]

On Tuesday, 11 September 2018 at 06:42:26 UTC, Chris wrote:
> On Monday, 10 September 2018 at 19:28:01 UTC, aberba wrote:
>> On Monday, 10 September 2018 at 16:09:41 UTC, rjframe wrote:
>
>>
>> That's exactly whats happening in Africa. The continent is 
>> leapfrogging from nothing to a smart phone thanks to China. 
>> Many don'[t know how to even use a PC. Especially the young 
>> and upcoming generation.
>>
>> The smart phone market is really significant.
>
> That's why I'm trying to draw attention to first class ARM 
> support by the D Foundation (not just some voluntary efforts, 
> much as they are appreciated). ARM in dmd wouldn't be a bad 
> idea perhaps, as Manu suggested. It's become more than obvious 
> over the last couple of years that mobile devices have become 
> very important and that people often use them instead of PCs or 
> laptops. Fewer and fewer developers can "escape" development 
> for mobile ("we want an app too"), and if a language doesn't 
> offer first class support for mobile, then devs won't bother 
> with it. A lot of other (new) languages are directing their 
> efforts towards mobile for a reason.

I agree with a lot of what you say here, but I'm not sure what 
you mean by "first class support for mobile." What exactly do you 
believe D needs to reach that level?

I think most of the heavy lifting with core language and stdlib 
support is done. What remains is polish and integration for the 
build process and possibly IDEs and of course, making sure there 
are D libraries to make mobile dev easier.

I will be sporadically polishing the build process over the 
coming months, by getting much more building through dub. I won't 
be doing anything with IDEs, as I don't use them.

As for libraries, that all depends on what you're doing and how 
much others in the D community want that too.

It might be a good idea to set up a funding target to get the iOS 
port back up to speed again. I don't use Apple products so it 
won't be me picking up that porting work, but maybe Dan could be 
enticed to finish it as a paid project, since he did most of the 
voluntary work so far. I'm purely speculating, no idea if money 
changes the equation for him, just know that he's been too busy 
to work on it for the last couple years.