Switching from Java to D: Beginner questions, multiplatform issues, etc.

[John Colvin]

On Thursday, 27 February 2014 at 10:23:40 UTC, DS6 wrote:
> Okay, down to the questions I have about D:
>  - Why should I use D over another language? What general 
> benefits does it provide me, in relation to the points I made 
> about it above? Is it a solid base to build off of, but still 
> simple in nature?

It's a flexible, well designed language. Many things that are 
complex and/or slow in other languages can be written in a 
readable and performant manner, with fewer nasty surprises.

>  - How is multiplatform compilation handled by D?

Fine as long as you stick with x86/x86_64 CPUs and a normal 
desktop operating system, i.e. Linux, Windows, OS X, ***BSD

Support for other types of systems is work-in-progress, mostly 
focused around gdc/ldc as dmd is an x86/x86_64 only compiler. 
Bear in mind that the same frontend is used for all 3 compilers, 
dmd is the reference compiler, gdc/ldc lag 1 release behind dmd.

>  - How well supported is D? I've read that D is still 
> relatively... Not new, or young, but less known than other 
> languages. Does it have support for major libraries, like SDL? 
> Aside: Whether or not these libs are "official" or not doesn't 
> matter to me, they usually aren't anyway.

You can use any C library from D, but you have to port the 
headers. This has been done for many libraries, see here: 
http://code.dlang.org/
There are some nice D-style wrappers that exist as well.
Links to other languages include 
https://github.com/JakobOvrum/LuaD, 
https://bitbucket.org/ariovistus/pyd
C++ libraries are less well supported, but there has been a 
certain amount of success.

>  - How is D used in the enterprise world?

Depends on your definition of enterprise. There are companies 
that use D (http://wiki.dlang.org/Current_D_Use).

>  - Lastly, and probably most important, is D code scalable and 
> easy to maintain? You never know, something I make could gain 
> popularity and I would suddenly need to mass-produce and 
> heavily modify my code to suit the needs of whatever crowd of 
> people suddenly want my services, whatever services I may 
> offer. Is going large-scale from an initially small-scale 
> project or otherwise prototype at least comparable, say, Java 
> (which is quite easy to manage large-scale if you do things 
> right)?

In my opinion, D code is highly scalable and maintainable. In 
particular, the strength of D's metaprogramming makes for 
flexible code.



Overall, D is a pragmatic language.