We are forking D

[Don Allen]

On Sunday, 7 January 2024 at 21:58:50 UTC, GrimMaple wrote:

>
> There simply isn't a GC based language that can be as quick as 
> C++

That's perhaps true of languages whose only memory-management 
method is GC-based. D isn't such a language. You can frequently 
avoid use of the GC in D because you have multiple 
memory-management techniques at your disposal.

I'm going to say something now that should be known by people who 
write code professionally, but is too often overlooked (I base 
this on many years of experience needing to convince people not 
to optimize prematurely and without having measured why their 
code doesn't perform as they would like). I'm not suggesting that 
you are guilty of this. I simply want it said explicitly.

The speed of the code generated by the language you are using is 
not necessarily the determining factor of the speed of your 
application. If your application is not cpu-limited and written 
in Python, re-writing it in C++ in pursuit of better performance 
is going to be a disappointment. If your application *is* 
cpu-limited but spends most of its time in some library, 
e.g.,sqlite, or in system-calls, re-writing it in C++ will only 
help in proportion to the time spent in your own code, which is 
small by assumption.

My point is that the performance vs. ease-of-coding tradeoff is 
not simple. It takes some smart engineering for a project to be 
near the sweet spot.