BetterC Is Not Ready

[Jack Stouffer]

On Thursday, 2 June 2022 at 21:18:55 UTC, max haughton wrote:
> Why are specialized runtimes a good idea? It's so much stuff to 
> get perfect, for what benefit?

Same question could be asked about different programming 
languages in general. Was it a waste for D to be created when C++ 
exists?

A simple example of a specialized runtime would be an audited 
simple runtime that could be used in security applications.

> What part of reimplementing exception handling helps me write a 
> better lap time optimizer?

I don't use exceptions and I think they're a bad idea. Without 
that, a GC, and OOP my runtime would be much smaller than 
druntime.

And the reason it helps you is because simpler or less code in 
general is easier to understand. When people understand what 
their code is doing it becomes easier to maintain and easier to 
optimize. I think a lot of people would be very surprised if they 
use the "step into" in their debugger throughout their code to 
see what the code is actually spending its time on.

I want less code not more. Phobos and druntime are a lot of code 
I don't need and don't want in my project. This is not to say 
that you're somehow *wrong* to use it in yours. That's fine. I 
just want the option not to use it.

> For target support diversity is useful but if you said "We're 
> writing a new runtime implementation, no new features for a 
> month" to your boss they would rightly be confused.

Why are you assuming everyone is going to write a runtime 
themselves? I plan to but I don't expect most people to, just as 
I don't expect most people to write their own D compiler.