Better branding of -betterC

[Dylan Graham]

On Thursday, 29 October 2020 at 14:28:58 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
> On Thursday, 29 October 2020 at 11:50:12 UTC, Dibyendu Majumdar 
> wrote:
>
>>
>> I was wondering if it worthwhile branding -betterC differently 
>> - e.g. use a brand such as 'micro-D' or some nicer name. That 
>> is, give it a new identity that highlights that it not just 
>> better C  - but a D version without GC.
>
> I think it's a bad, bad, bad idea to put any emphasis on 
> BetterC other than as a tool to help in porting C or C++ code 
> to D, or to integrate D into existing C and C++ projects. I see 
> too many people reaching for it first thing, probably out of a 
> misguided GC phobia. D is the language we need to be promoting. 
> BetterC was intended for a specific purpose. Beyond that, it's 
> a crippled D. If some people prefer to use it that way, fine, 
> but we shouldn't encourage it.

I use BetterC in my products (car engine/gearbox parts) targeting 
ARM Cortex MCUs, but once I get a lightweight D runtime up I 
intend to switch to that.

I think such a thing could reduce reliance on BetterC and allow 
for quicker easing into full D.

Given it's a real time environment I'm thinking that Phobos 
allocations will be tracked in a stack like structure per thread 
and can then be freed at a later, convenient opportunity or 
immediately after the Phobos call ends.

I could see about making some sort of small scale GC but that's 
currently out of my depth.