D vs. C#

[Kyle Furlong]

Walter Bright wrote:
> Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
>> With .NET, you can derive from a class in a compiled assembly without
>> having access to the source. You just add the assembly in the
>> project's dependencies and import the namespace with "using". In C,
>> you must use the included .h files (and .h files are a pain to
>> maintain anyway since you must maintain the declaration and
>> implementation separately, but that's not news to you).
> 
> Yes, but that's a language bug, not anything inherent to native compilers.
> 
>> You must
>> still use .lib and .di files with D and such - although they can be
>> automated in the build process, it's still a hassle.
> 
> D has the potential to do better, it's just that its a bit mired in the 
> old school.
> 

What do you envision as better for the future? Or were you just speaking 
hypothetically? Will link compatibility be kept for 2.0, 3.0 etc?

> 
>> Besides that, statically linking in the runtime seems to be a too
>> common practice, as "DLL hell" has been a discouragement for
>> dynamically-linked libraries in the past (side-by-side assemblies is
>> supposed to remedy that though). I guess the fault is not in the DLLs
>> themselves, it's how people and Microsoft used them...
> 
> The solution to this is to have automatically generated versions for 
> each build of a DLL/shared library. I imagine that .net does the same 
> thing for assemblies.
>