Making D better than other programming languages (warning: rant, drivel)

[Dave]

Nils Hensel wrote:
> Walter Bright schrieb:
>> One thing you mentioned as a proven productivity booster is dynamic
>> typing. D isn't going to do dynamic typing, but its type inference
>> support is getting much better, to the point where one does not need to
>> explicitly say nearly so many types.
> 
> I agree, this is a great feature. In this aspect D is nearly a
> compilable Python. I found myself using D in cases I normally would have
> used Python for.
> 
> Way to go! ;-)
> 
> Cheers,
> Nils

Where I work right now, they do a lot of Perl (the most productive language mentioned in the OP).

Because of the built-in strings, AA's, good/easy I/O and regexp lib., D could be great for a lot of 
what Perl is used for. And perhaps just as productive for many text processing tasks for the average 
Perl hacker who doesn't have all of the arcane Perl syntax imprinted in their temporal lobe yet.

Anyhow, there are two reasons why D isn't in this shop:

1) No (current) 'port' for HPUX
2) For security and system stability reasons, anything new and relatively unproven is pretty 
unlikely to make it onto the machines in this shop (pretty prudent actually).

With that in mind.. Once v1.0 of D is released, it may actually be a good idea for Walter to call in 
some chips and get a 'code security audit' done on the compiler and phobos if possible. Some 
assurance to prospective commercial users that it's safe to install on their 'big-iron' may go a 
long way towards at least getting organizations to try it, but I really don't know.

(It may be impressive to headline something like "The D v1.0 compiler and runtime library have 
passed a 3rd-party code security audit". [if a statement like that wouldn't void some portion of the 
'suitability warranty'.])