A D vs. Rust example

[Ali Çehreli]

On 10/27/22 15:11, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

 > No. The argument was whether it makes sense to use Rust for building the
 > core engine of Firefox or not.

No. Your argument was about GC not being usable for such applications.

 > The position I argued against was that
 > you could just as well do it with a standard freeze-the-world GC or Go
 > with full GC. The argument isn't strictly related to D, that is
 > something you brought to the table.

I did not bring D to the table.

This thread is titled "A D vs. Rust example" where people are trying to 
convince the OP that their real-world experience is false because 
browsers support realtime applications as well.

 > 99% of all languages use some kind of GC, most of the programs written
 > are done using some kind of GC. Having automatic memory management is
 > the norm, not the outlier.

Everybody knows that.

 > That does not mean that non-GC applications can be replaced with a
 > run-of-the-mill GC solution and be competitive.

Everybody would agree with that.

How does that point make any sense in this discussion though? Who was 
arguing doing any of that? If you are referring to the claim that some 
percentage of languages (including D) cannot be used to write a browser, 
that is simply false. Because my claim is different: Many programming 
languages (including D) can be written to write a browser. There...

 > It makes sense to use
 > languages like Rust for even mundane things like cloud web services
 > where you want to conserve memory.

What are you saying? Who would ever not want to conserve memory?

 > I am not a Rust user at this point, but I also don't assume that people
 > who use it don't understand the tradeoffs.

Some people do understand the tradeoffs but many others just follow the 
tide.

 >> Now, to break your logic, I present Weka.IO, world's fastest file
 >> system, written in D. Period.
 >
 > Do they use the regular D GC all the way?

None whatsoever.

 >> As I've shown above, it is possible and workable.
 >
 > I have absolutely no idea what you are referring to here.

I was quoting you. You said "It is possible, but not workable."

But now I see: You were using the niche application of "realtime 
applications in the browser" to prove that a run-of-the-mill GC cannot 
be used for it.

Fine with me as long as you don't argue that a run-of-the-mill GC (e.g. 
the one in D) cannot be used to write a browser.

Ali