D Language Foundation Quarterly Meeting, October 2021

[Tobias Pankrath]

On Monday, 8 November 2021 at 12:02:43 UTC, Atila Neves wrote:
> On Saturday, 6 November 2021 at 15:46:57 UTC, JN wrote:
>> On Friday, 5 November 2021 at 13:19:24 UTC, zjh wrote:
>>> D can aim at `experts`, especially `meta programming users`.
>>> On this point,`rust` can't compete.
>>> `Silky general meta programming`.
>>> Use my `strengths` to attack theirs weaknesses.
>>>
>>
>> This is much less of a strength than you think. For 90% of 
>> cases, lack of metaprogramming is resolved by putting a Python 
>> script in build step that autogenerates the necessary code.
>
> Python has no idea about D syntax or semantics (or any other 
> language not called Python), and therefore can't even do 
> something as simple as "what are all the D structs in module 
> x". You'd have to invent a templating language on top of the 
> code you're already writing, then write some Python code to 
> parse and generate on top of *that*.
>
> To me, that's like saying that C/Fortran aren't that big of a 
> deal compared to assembly. Who needs for loops, amirite?

What C# does and what's probably easier for tooling and newbes is 
to let users hook into the compilation step and generate code on 
the fly given full compiler knowledge to the already existing 
code prior to generation.