Dynamic Code in D

[Michael Wilson]

CptJack wrote:
> Once you begin to do some serious programming in Lisp, and know it 
> as well as you do your current language of choice, I think you will 
> find that it is /much/ faster to program in than any other language. 
> At first you will be fighting the syntax and the parens, then one day
> you will just "get it" and your world will change. It has so many
> unique features that you will wonder how you ever programmed without 
> them (in fact, almost every "exciting new feature" in language X was
 > implemented in Lisp 40 years ago).

I could write a long response to this but it would be off topic for
this newsgroup. Rather I will say only that I have written a moderate
about of Lisp code and I have had many, many encounters with 'keen'
Lisp advocates. I can't recall /ever/ winning a 'which language to
use' debate with /any/ of them, for any real or proposed application.
At some point in becoming fond of the language a critical threshold
is reached and that person is forever more believes that no other
(high-level) language has a genuine reason to exist. I think I can
understand where this notion comes from (I have had some experience
of language and compiler design), but I certainly don't agree with it.
In any case I've found such debates rather unproductive.

> The only reason I'm still making arguments in favor of Common Lisp for
 > your project is because what you describe is basically a Common Lisp
 > implementation hacked together from Java and C.

You may believe this, probably based on a mental model that states 'all
other languages are a nasty subset of Lisp' as an axiom, but it is not
the case in this (or for that matter, most) instance. In fact I'm
curious why you're here at all, as this also implies that D can never
be more than a nasty subset of Lisp.

Michael Wilson
Systems Developer
Purple Frog Text Ltd