"The End of Native Code"

[David Medlock]

Daniel Keep wrote:
> 
> David Medlock wrote:
> 
>>Andrei Khropov wrote:
>>
>>>David Medlock wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Walter Bright wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>pragma wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>Slashdot had an interesting ask slashdot article yesterday about
>>>>>>when  is
>>>>>>it the right time to go whole-hog into interpreted/VM style language
>>>>>>development.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/06/06/12/2044245.shtml
>>>>>>
>>>>>>As its an issue that we're all familar with, I figured I'd read
>>>>>>and  see
>>>>>>why this article had 1000+ comments.  I was actually quite suprised to
>>>>>>find a  number of people, mostly C++ guys, clamoring for "native
>>>>>>compilation plus garbage collection" or some variant thereof.  What
>>>>>>was
>>>>>>also suprising was the  number of "have you not seen D yet?"
>>>>>>replies to
>>>>>>these posts, and how well they  were modded *up*.  As slashdot is
>>>>>>peer-moderated, this means that registered users  of the site had
>>>>>>to take
>>>>>>the time to hand out positive reviews on those  particular posts.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>So I have to say: you guys rock.  Remember, slashdot users pretty much
>>>>>>hung D from the yard-arm on not one but two articles about D.  What
>>>>>>I saw
>>>>>>today was a subtle, but noticable shift in this attitude.  The word
>>>>>>finally seems  to be getting out.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>I saw the article when it first came out, but I obviously need to
>>>>>go  read
>>>>>the followups.
>>>>>
>>>>>The gist of the article as I interpreted it is that people go to script
>>>>>languages because they are more productive. Why are they more
>>>>>productive?
>>>>>
>>>>>1) garbage collection
>>>>>
>>>>>2) dynamic typing
>>>>>
>>>>>3) lots of libraries
>>>>>
>>>>>D's got garbage collection.
>>>>>
>>>>>Dynamic typing is interesting in that while it is more productive,
>>>>>it's  a
>>>>>big reason why scripting languages will always be slooow. It's also
>>>>>interesting in that if you look real hard at C++ templates, a lot
>>>>>of  what
>>>>>they are used for is to fake dynamic typing.
>>>>>
>>>>>D is moving towards what I call implicit typing - I've been taking
>>>>>a  hard
>>>>>look at where one is required to specify a type, and instead trying  to
>>>>>figure out a way the type can be inferred instead (foreach is a good
>>>>>example). Implicit typing gets D a number of the benefits of dynamic
>>>>>typing with less complexity than the C++ template approach.
>>>>
>>>><snip>
>>>>
>>>>Are you saying you will move towards SML like typing (Hindley-Milner
>>>>type) ?
>>>
>>>
>>>See Nemerle (http://nemerle.org/) - Hidney-Milner in C-family syntax.
>>>Looks
>>>very promising.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Thanks for the heads up.
>>It does look good!  Looks like dot Net only though.. :(
>>
>>I hope they get either native or even translation to C.
>>
>>-DavidM
> 
> 
> I've never understood this aversion to non-native languages.  Let's be
> frank: native machine code is good, but it isn't the be-all and end-all.
>  Nemerle was developed using .NET because that way they didn't have to
> write a compiler; they could just use Reflection.Emit to generate their
> assemblies.
> 
> Plus, it frees them from having to support every platform and processor
> separately.
> 
> As for .NET itself, I think it's excellent.  For most purposes, it's got
> plenty of performance (people are writing video decoders in C#), lots of
> different languages to use, and a fairly complete set of libraries.
> 
> I agree in that it would be fantastic to have something like Nemerle for
> native code, but I certainly won't discriminate against it just because
> it's managed.
> 
> 	-- Daniel
> 
> P.S.  Just in case you get the wrong idea, I'm far from a .NET fanb0i.
> C# is only just "Ok" as a language, and the class library is painful in
> many places.  Still, it's better than Java *shudders*.
> 
I make my living as a Java developer for 10 years now, so I would 
definitely say I don't have an aversion to bytecode languages.

Actually the majority of my non-D hobby programming is in python and 
lua, the opposite end of native-code languages.

Please try not to draw conclusions which aren't there.  I like doing 
games and have some significant code developed.  To adopt C# I have to:

1. Learn a new language(not too difficult but still annoying with little 
benefit over D)

2. Find wrappers for any libraries I may be using or write them.

3. Get used to MS development tools, which I have not really used at all.

4. Make sure anyone who tries my programs has .NET installed.

5. Expect some difficulty re: cross platform games if I use any MS 
specific .NET libraries.

Thanks.