"Stop Designing Languages. Write Libraries Instead."

[Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)]

On 5/2/19 4:08 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> Stumbled upon an interesting read today:
> 
> 	http://lbstanza.org/purpose_of_programming_languages.html
> 
> Note: read to the end before jumping to conclusions about what the
> article is trying to say.
> 
> It made me wonder how D fares in terms of being able to implement
> libraries that are maximally easy to use.

First of all, I want to emphasize: That article's title is *incredibly* 
misleading. The double-quotes around the title are FAR too easy to 
overlook and ignore, and for this article, that makes all the difference 
in the world.

Turns out, my knee-jerk reaction to the title was *exactly* the very 
same point the article is making: Sure, libraries are a major key, *BUT* 
it's the language's features that make a good library even possible in 
the first place. It's the *language* that determines how good the 
libraries can be.

I think that Phobos ranges and Vibe.d are perfect examples of how D does 
a fantastic job of providing a solid basis for excellent libraries.

For example, most languages, including "Node"'s JavaScript, just aren't 
*capable* of what makes Vibe-d awesome.

And very few languages could support the modeling power Phobos Ranges 
without sacrificing one (or both) of our range API's other key pillars: 
Type safety and Efficiency.