Could D have fit Microsoft's needs?

[Russel Winder]

On Sat, 2019-07-20 at 17:22 -0700, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> 
[…]
> D has some huge advantages over Rust.

In certain cases, yes. For me D/GtkD/GStreamerD is better than Rust/gtk-
rs/gstreamer-rs for writing GTK+ and GStreamer based applications exactly
because inheritance, integral to the GObject mode, is part of D whereas is not
in Rust and there has to be massive superstructure in gtk-rs and gstreamer-rs
to handle this.

In other cases, no. GStreamer folk have chosen Rust as the language for
GStreamer so using Rust for applications gets support using D leaves you on
your own.

> For example, D has a familiar syntax and jargon. For another, you'll be able
> to 
> move to memory safety incrementally with D, you won't have to rewrite your
> app 
> from the start. D's metaprogramming abilities far exceed Rust's. Etc.

I wonder of incremental change of programming language in a codebase is just a
nice concept rather than a practiced reality?

One of Kotlin's massive advantages was that Java codebases could be
incrementally transformed as needed from Java to Kotlin. Yet this is not how
things have happened (as far as I know). Kotlin has taken Android development
by storm, but this is nothing to do with incremental change of a code base.

It seems Java codebases are treated as Java, and part Java, part Kotlin is not
seen as a way forward.

Although Rust is now big in the GStreamer community, it is only for new or
replacement plugins, there appears to be no replacement of C code with Rust
code in the core libraries.

-- 
Russel.
===========================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk
better than 
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