Why is D unpopular?

[H. S. Teoh]

On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 04:38:21PM +0000, Adam D Ruppe via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Thursday, 12 May 2022 at 15:58:03 UTC, jmh530 wrote:
> > If it importC reduces the barrier, then I see it as a positive even
> > if there are other tools that work better for you or others.
> 
> Well, like I said, importC does have potential to exceed dstep. Maybe
> it will next year, but it isn't there yet.
> 
> So we shouldn't undersell the significant success that D and dstep
> have already had.

Yeah, current D (without ImportC) + dstep (or just manual translation,
really) is already very nice to work with, in terms of interfacing with
C libraries. I've done a fair bit of work using this method, interfacing
with libraries like libxcb, xlib, MPFR, freetype, sqlite, EGL, GLES2,
etc., just to name a few.

What will make ImportC stand out above the current situation is
integrated preprocessor support, which apparently Walter already
submitted a PR for.  Once that's done and we can import C headers
without creating a separate input file (either a .di or .d with dstep or
manual preprocessing), *then* ImportC would have better value than what
we currently have.


T

-- 
Fact is stranger than fiction.