D and the world

[janderson]

David B. Held wrote:
> Bill Baxter wrote:
>> [...]
>> That said, there will always be that 5% of code that really really 
>> needs the maximum performance the machine can deliver.  I'd definitely 
>> rather write that in D than Fortran, C, or C++.
> 
> I think this number is much bigger than 5%.  Consider that much of PC 
> advancement has come at the hands of gamers, and gamers demand the kind 
> of performance that will never be delivered by a VM.

I'm not sure about this one.  I think C# with is practically a VM will 
be embraced by the game industry (due to XNA).  Much of the gpu work and 
physics work will be handled by libraries (or drivers) that where 
written in C++ (and some C).   However the core part of the game will be 
C#.  Even XBox360 games can be written in C#.  Some games will still be 
C++.  However, I think C# will give developers more time to focus on the 
optimizations that matter.  Of course not all games are written on 
windows (for instances Sony and Nintendo don't).  Most developers I 
speak to hate the sony dev tools (I sure did).  Nintendo is kinda in the 
same boat but its less of an issue because I think only a few games will 
try to push the hardware, most of the performance issues will be 
designed away because of the inherit limitations.

>  Whereas pr0n just 
> drives video playback performance, games drive everything from display 
> rendering to physics simulation to network performance, which is why 
> games are written almost exclusively in C and C++ and comprise about a 
> $10 billion/year industry.  

I agree here however think it is becoming less of an issue with many 
games.  However I think, the main reason C and C++ is still being used 
is its hard to switch to something else because of the massive potential 
costs (as I outlined before).  XNA elevates most of these costs by 
providing the complete pipeline in one package.

> If you also consider that scientific and 
> large-scale apps are almost never written on top of a VM, you are "just 
> left" with mid- to low-end business and consumer apps.  That's still a 
> sizable chunk of the market, but by no means 95%.

I know a guy who has always maintained that some sciences wrote the 
fastest traveling salesmen problem in Java.  I've argued that if you 
took their algorithm and put it in D or C++ it could be faster, to no 
avail.  I can't fault him for being a die hard Java fan though, being a 
D fan myself.

-Joel