OT: on IDEs and code writing on steroids

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

davidl wrote:
> ÔÚ Mon, 18 May 2009 16:01:56 +0800£¬bearophile 
> <bearophileHUGS at lycos.com> дµÀ:
> 
>> Yigal Chripun:
>>
>>> first, typos - eclipse has a built-in spell checker so all those
>>> "lenght" will be underlined with an orange squiggly line.
>>
>> A much better solution is to use "size" (or even "len") everywhere in 
>> D, that avoids such typos in the first place.
>> An IDE is useful, but it's better to improve the language first, so 
>> later you don't use the IDE to write boilerplate or fix typos.
>>
>> -----------------
>>
>>> If we ignore this fact D will become another niche academic language 
>>> that no one uses.<
>>
>> Unfortunately I think the academy isn't much interested in D. So if D 
>> doesn't succeed, it will just be a dead language.
>> Currently there are only few things that make D better than C#4 (and 
>> F#, that is different). Note that in C#4 there are ways to generate 
>> code on the fly, this is done much less often than template 
>> programming in D, but it's doable.
>>
>>
>>> second, D needs to update its stone age compilation model copied from 
>>> C++.<
>>
>> Yes. Eventually Walter will need to take a look at way people write 
>> C#, and update D.
>> "moons" files that bundle modules, built-in bud-like functionality, 
>> DDLs and more. Things to think about.
>>
>> Bye,
>> bearophile
> 
>  From a commercial basis for Walter, it may be easier to glue a C# 
> frontend against the DMD backend to create a native C# compiler. Waiting 
> D to be a successful language requires a longer time. And people needs 
> higher cost to move to D. Reusing current .Net codebase is a very strong 
> selling point.
> C# does many correct decisions, better identifier resolve. Its frontend 
> is considered to be written very high quality. Adding stuff on top of C# 
> frontend may be an easier approach.
> Some people want to compile C# source to native either with the purpose 
> of closing their source and obtaining higher performance.
> C# gets much bigger code base than D code base. Most importantly, you 
> can not ignore the brilliance of the .Net framework.

I've repeatedly failed to figure out the coolness of C#, and would 
appreciate a few pointers. Or references. Or delegates :o).


Andrei