D enters Tiobe top 20

SrMordred patric.dexheimer at gmail.com
Wed Mar 11 17:02:58 UTC 2020


On Wednesday, 11 March 2020 at 15:30:41 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> On Wednesday, 11 March 2020 at 13:40:08 UTC, SrMordred wrote:
>> My point was that, although i love dpp project, it doenst feel 
>> part of the D lang.
>
> #include "foo.h" is close enough for me.
>
>> Its an external project that first comers on the language will 
>> just not see, its not yet completly reliable (but work in most 
>> cases!),and have some external work to do: create a .dpp file, 
>> include the headers that what u, compile/generate binds.
>
> Honestly, I don't see this as much of an issue, at least in 
> what I've done with dpp. It would be nice if it worked out of 
> the box, but I really don't see that as a big issue these days, 
> more of a one-time minor inconvenience to get it set up.
>
>> All this process feels external to the D language.
>
> IMO, that's a good thing - C interop *is* external to the D 
> language.
>
>> And although u can make things works, these are little 
>> frictions that build up until people start to look for 
>> alternatives. (Zig is way more friendly in this area for 
>> example. People that are switching from C will find that Zig C 
>> interop is very pleasant in comparisson with D).
>
> Zig includes a C compiler. That's convenient, but that's not 
> the only relevant metric, and I'm not sure I see it as an 
> advantage over outsourcing compilation to gcc or clang. I admit 
> that I've only spent a little time with Zig, so maybe my 
> impressions are not fully accurate.

Yeah, its not that is an "issue". I also use dpp, and most of the 
time it just works fine.
The point is that if u come from C/C++ world and u start to try 
another languages, smalls frictions can build up. Lets suppose 
they try D and Zig.

I think that if u came from C, D + betterC is amazing (is the 
reason why i´m using D now ), but u have an giant wall called 
garbage collector. Most people will dismiss D before even knowing 
about betterC, or ways to avoid gc.

Most people will not even know about DPP. Its not part of D, is 
just a project. (that´s what i meant by not being part of D).

Then they discover DPP, so lets try it: git clone, build, create 
dpp file (again, another thing that´s not really D) include the 
headers that i want, d++ ... to generate the binds ( lets ignore 
compilation ), include in my project. Nice, it works.

Now lets try Zig. Zig its already low level/no GC, so its looks 
better before really looking.
const c = @cImport({ @cInclude("header.h") });
zig run main.zig
Works. (again ignoring compilation of C parts, although Zig being 
better at it ).

Its hard to convince people that came from low level programming 
backgrounds to use D by comparison.

Again, I started this discussion responding the question : "I'm 
surprised C is still on second place. What can we do to kill it 
really?"

For me, D+betterC is a C killer. But D focus was never to be a C 
killer, although i think it have the potential to be.



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