Modern C++ Won't Save Us

[bioinfornatics]

On Wednesday, 28 April 2021 at 13:18:57 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:
> On Wednesday, 28 April 2021 at 10:33:43 UTC, bioinfornatics 
> wrote:
>> D do not have yet a competitive framework on Big Data «à la» 
>> Spark, datascience «à la» Pandas/Dask (pandas with multi nodes 
>> computing)
>
> I've found it to be very difficult to move away from Python in 
> general, it isn't only about frameworks but the massive amount 
> of focused tested libraries available. For instance, I recently 
> were to analyze a set of HRTFs (signal processing impulse 
> responses) in a file format called SOFA, and I only found C++ 
> and Python libraries for it. I tried to set up the C++ library, 
> but it turned out to be time consuming, Python was just plug 
> and play... so I ended up doing everything in numpy.
>
> At the end of the day developer time was more precious than 
> execution time, which was somewhat slow, but not slower than 
> the time I saved on development time.
>
> It is very difficult for any language to get there, not because 
> of the computational aspect, but because of the interfacing, 
> both social and technical.

Exactly the strength of python is the eco-system and not a 
library alone.
For datascience they are a rich ecosystem with 
pandas/dask/ray/numpy/scikitlearn as core.

I see in my works when you have to choose a language is not for a 
killer app but for a set of library that meet our needs. This 
eco-system have to be easy to set as our job is to make an 
application with all requested feature not a try hard path to 
install and configure new things.

And I am a D fan but for reason above I never yet be able to use 
D for a professional needs.

Moreover we have to take in account the number of candidate to 
hire which would like to do a D application … Its is close to 
impossible to find while Rust most have never used it but it is a 
dreamed technology and they want to learn it with a professional 
use case.
Recently with the declaration of linus torvald that c++ is a shit 
and Rust is now into to the kernel. The Rust hype growth even 
quickly.

To me, Walter Bright or Andrei Alexandrescu have to meet Linus 
Torvald to shown how D is a good language. And After let the 
influencer Linus Torvald to do the job.