Andrei's Google Talk

[dsimcha]

== Quote from bearophile (bearophileHUGS at lycos.com)'s article
> Andrei Alexandrescu:
> > Walter is more silent than usual because he's working very hard on the
> > 64-bit compiler. He hopes to have one by the end of this month. His next
> > big goal is shared library support.
> I am sorry to say this, but I think porting the current back-end to 64 bit is a
waste of time because it will not be used for professional usages. I think LLVM
will be the main back-end for professional usages of D2, with maybe GDC2 or later
even a dotnet D2 compiler too.

Why is DMD not usable professionally?  I think that, since a key niche for D is
scientific computing, 64-bit is an absolute must-have.  No other issue with D has
caused me half as much pain as lack of 64-bit support when I use D for
bioinformatics work on large datasets.  Not lack of shared library support, not
misc. compiler bugs, not lack of library support, not lack of IDE support, not
even lack of precise GC.  In hindsight, D is such an awesome language that I still
don't regret using it and working around the lack of 64 support, but at times I
felt like I was trapped in the caveman era with an old 8086 and the 640K barrier.

Yes, LDC will hopefully be ported to D2 eventually, or another LLVM-based D
compiler might be written.  Yes, GDC2 may be caught up eventually.  Regardless,
the flagship implementation still needs to be good at what the language claims to
be good at, and if the language seems to be targetting scientific computing, and
claims to be somewhat mature, lack of 64-bit support in the reference
implementation is simply inexcusable.

P.S.  None of this should be construed as an attack, complaint, etc. against
Walter.  I understand the need to get the core language spec stable before working
on tool chain issues, and until recently D2 made no claim to being "somewhat
mature".  Now that it is making that claim, 64-bit support is being taken
seriously, as it should be.