Re: A look at the D programming language by Ferdynand Górski

[Walter Bright]

On 1/14/2013 10:30 PM, Rob T wrote:
> A really important advantage that scripting languages provides that D does not
> currently provide, is direct runtime interpretation of the language. This is
> very important for the use cases of script languages such as Ruby and PHP,
> because often they are used for coding and testing on the fly, ie., used in an
> environment that requires frequent changes with almost instant feedback.

The way this is currently done is to put the code that would otherwise be in a 
script into a DLL, and then the dev process becomes:

1. run program
2. dynamically load DLL with "script"
3. debug
4. change "script" code
5. recompile "script" into new DLL
6. reload DLL
7. rinse, repeat

It turns out that step 5 is nearly instant, on the order of a few seconds.

The hair in the process, however, is DLLs still need better support in D.

> You can also embed a scripting language directly into other applications, and
> store "code" as data, which can be transmitted from one machine to another over
> the wire. We can store and transmit D code too, but getting it to automatically
> run on the other end is not so easy or convenient.

Just so you know, we have a Javascript engine written in D, meaning you can 
embed Javascript.