What's the current state of D?

[Brad Roberts]

Leandro Lucarella wrote:
> 
> Another very *BIG* issue is lack of mainstream tools support.
> 
> C++98 was finished before starting C++0x. A lot of effort was made to make
> mainstream tools to support C++. Most tools demangle C++ names (even when
> they aren't standard!). At least GDB should be able to do that, and
> Valgrind and GNU binutils, if you want people to be comfortable working
> with D. There are patches here and there but nothing works out of the box.

A critical error that keeps being made.. in MOST compiled languages, the authors
of the compilers are not the ones that are producing the eco-systems above them.
 Even for the VM based languages, the language/compiler/runtime authors rarely
venture much above those.  Eclipse isn't a sun invention, nor are any of the
other development environments.  Microsoft is about the only one that produces
an large tool chain, but the groups that do the various parts are different.
The compiler team doesn't produce (or in many cases even use) Visual Studio.

Etc..

So, want the tool chain to mature.. go to work.  Work with the GDB community to
build and incorporate changes.  The same with all the things you want to see
changed or created.

If there's things that need to change in what the compiler emits, Walter has
shown himself to be willing to rapidly change them where the required changes
are clearly described in terms of both 'what' and 'why'.  In other words, "it's
broken" isn't sufficient but "if the frobble was changed to frobnosticator for
each wobble, it would work" results in the next release having that change made.

> I think what D1 is *really* missing is that 2 things: completeness and
> tools support. Without that is really hard to take it seriously.
> 
> I think the D team should be working more in that direction before
> finishing D2. I know is very boring comparing it to making D2, but I think
> that is what is transmitted from D maintainers: "D1 is boring, don't pay
> attention to it, D2 is fun, let's play with that!". And this is what
> happening. People are playing with D2 and forgetting to finish D1.

If you've gotten the impression that "d1 is boring" is the message from whatever
this "the d team" (team suggests many people, but there's really just a tiny few
involved -- this isn't microsoft or sun with hundreds of worker ants) is, then
you're impression is off.  The message is "d1 is only receiving bug fixes -- and
only those with the right balance of risk/reward".

> The Tango vs. Phobos is still a *BIG* issue for D1. I think don't
> addressing that is a huge error. It's only hurting D1 and preventing its
> adoption.
> 
> The result is 2 incomplete, unsupported (by mainstream tools) languages.

This is, in my honest opinion, the most clearly debatable point.  I happen to
have originally been on the side of "we must do something for D1" but since then
I've agreed that the effort is best spent moving forward than disrupting the
current.

---

All of the above is _my_ opinion, and everyone is entitled to their own.

Later,
Brad