Could D have fit Microsoft's needs?

bpr brogoff at gmail.com
Fri Jul 19 19:01:32 UTC 2019


On Friday, 19 July 2019 at 00:12:06 UTC, Mike Franklin wrote:
> D is unique from Rust and C# in that is scales both up and down.

     I assume that you're claiming that Rust doesn't scale, or 
scale well, in some direction, likely 'up', and that D does scale 
well in this direction, and the other. I don't believe there's 
evidence for Rust inability to scale yet. C and C++ both scaled, 
in the sense that they are used from embedded devices up to full 
scale apps in many domains, and if anything to me Rust looks more 
promising than either. It's quite young compared to D and has 
already seen more widespread adoption where I live. Your "weird 
shit" example suggests that scaling up with D is nontrivial, even 
for an expert who really wants D to work to avoid C++.

     Also, I like the algebraic data types of 
Rust/Swift/Scala/OCaml/... a lot. My version of 'Dust' would have 
algebraic data types, immutability as the default, D templates, 
overloading, static introspection, and macros. As much Rust as D 
there. In that sense, just adding more safety features to D is 
not making it Dust for me. Time for a new D?

>  So, Microsoft is missing an opportunity to have one language 
> for all use cases.  But I still think D has to do something 
> about the technical debt and other "weird sh**" to make it 
> viable.

I don't see why Microsoft would consider D rather than Rust or 
some other language. With the technical debt and "weird shit" you 
mention why wouldn't they just start on something new, learning 
from the design of D?



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