A D vs. Rust example

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

On Friday, 28 October 2022 at 16:03:07 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:
> 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.

Which is the same thing. This was the context, Don implied that 
Mozilla could have used the builtin GC:

«If you think that the user experience would be any different if 
Mozilla used Go or D for the work they are doing with Firefox, 
then you and I just need to agree to disagree.»

They can't without affecting performance and resource usage. It 
is not competitive. It is possible, but not workable.

> > Do they use the regular D GC all the way?
>
> None whatsoever.

Hence the file system example had nothing to do with argument 
about using the standard GC. Everybody here knows that you can 
use D as a C/C++ replacement with no GC. But if you remove the GC 
then there is no point to the argument as then you don't have a 
significantly lower cost than you get by using Rust.

> >> 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."

It is possible with the GC, but not workable, i.e. Firefox would 
not be competitive against Chrome.

> 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.

It is possible, but not workable…

That's just reality. You have to do better than the most used 
browser for there to be any point to even start on such a venture.