What kinds of Software do you create in D.

[H. S. Teoh]

On Mon, Nov 01, 2021 at 08:33:22PM +0000, harakim via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Monday, 1 November 2021 at 20:32:04 UTC, harakim wrote:
> > On Saturday, 30 October 2021 at 01:48:25 UTC, harakim wrote:
> > > I'm curious: Is there a poll somewhere that asks what kind of
> > > software projects people write in D? If not, what does everyone
> > > write using the D Language?
> > 
> > This is definitely not a research-journal-worth analysis but I quickly
> > went through and summarized the usages in this thread
> > 
> > Developer Tools: 7
> > Productivity Tools: 6
> > Multimedia Desktop Applications: 3
> > Other Desktop Apps: 3
> > Games: 3
> > Data Processing (including signals and bioinformatics): 3
> > Web Development: 2
> > Embedded Development : 2
> 
> I made a correction.

Late to this, but I use D for a wide variety of purposes (all personal,
unfortunately -- currently I'm unable to use D at work for various
reasons).  Here are some of the projects I've used it for:


CLI:

- As a sophisticated substitute for shell scripts (i.e., anything that
  requires more than simple if-then-else shell scripts, D is much more
  suitable, thanks to proper typing, arrays, an awesome std.process,
  etc..).  Various convenience wrappers around backup programs like tar
  and rsync, etc..

- A scheduling program for assigning people to slots in recurring
  events on a rotational basis.

- A simple CLI-based TODO list manager.

- A replacement for the BSD `cal` program that I recently started using
  exclusively (see: https://github.com/quickfur/dcal )


Math-related:

- A geometric calculator for computing convex hulls and other geometric
  operations, for exploration of higher-dimensional geometry and
  generating visualizations, containing:
   - A not-bad double-description convex hull implementation written
     entirely in D;
   - A D implementation of Kaibel's algorithm for face lattice
     enumeration from vertex incidences;
   - A wrapper around the MPFR arbitrary-precision floating point
     library;
   - A fit-to-grid algebraic number identifier / guesser;
   - A permutation factorization utility (for identifying permutation
     sets given a set of n-dimensional points);
   - An external test utility (as a complement to built-in unittests;
     this one uses std.process's awesome convenient API for running
     canned tests on user-specified command-lines, and Phobos' awesome
     Levenshtein distance algorithm for reporting unexpected outputs in
     a minimal way).

- A math exploration tool for rendering images of 2D equations that can
  handle arbitrary equations in 2 variables. Does both PNG output and
  on-the-spot OpenGL rendition.  Contains a minimal wrapper around
  libfreetype for font rendering.

- A Gröbner basis solver (toy version only, though; I lack the skill to
  write an industrial-strength one).

- A simple Monte Carlo springs-and-sticks model solver.

- A library for performing exact computations with quadratic irrationals
  (see: https://github.com/quickfur/qrat )

- Various ad hoc solvers for various geometric problems, counting
  problems, etc..


Music:

- A management program for automating the generation of boilerplate for
  large music typesetting projects in Lilypond.

- A program for dissecting midi files (incomplete).


Web:

- A CGI utility for generating HTML interlinears given text input.

- Various maintenance utilities for managing a website and scripted
  generation of content updates.


Casual games:

- An experimental GLES2 Android game (incomplete) with an on-PC X11 test
  harness. Contains D utilities for auto-generation of GLES boilerplate
  plus the associated D-facing interfaces.

- Various casual text-based games (incomplete; basically they only get
  worked on when I have spare time, which I have rather little of),
  which use an ECS-like object storage system and a minimalistic
  serialization / deserialization module (both with super nice APIs
  thanks for D's compile-time introspection).

- A game simulation program for generating 2D terrains with some degree
  of realism by simulating wind/water erosion over a 2D grid.

- Various puzzle game solvers (sliding block puzzles, etc.).

- A terminal output recorder / replayer for programs that use Adam
  Ruppe's arsd.terminal for output. (Basically, for recording and
  replaying terminal-based game playthroughs.)

//

Basically, anything that needs programming to solve, I reach for D.
Except perhaps for trivial (<10-15 line) shell scripts, which are still
easier to write in shell than in D.  But anything more complex than
trivial shell scripts, I reach for D for better expressivity and
control. (The shell's promiscuous tendency to expand variables in
strings everywhere it's not wanted is extremely frustrating; I prefer
D's much cleaner syntax and predictable semantics.)


T

-- 
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.