The Next Big Language

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 10/19/10 14:04 CDT, Max Samukha wrote:
> On 10/19/2010 09:06 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
>> bearophile wrote:
>>> The point I was trying to express is that from what I have seen people
>>> are
>>> able to learn to program Python (this means quite more than just the
>>> syntax)
>>> in *much* less time it takes to learn C++/D. And this has precise
>>> causes.
>>
>> Time will tell how long it will take people to become idiomatically
>> proficient in D. But also consider that Andrei's book "Modern C++
>> Design" completely changed the idiomatic way people wrote C++ programs.
>> A 1990's state of the art C++ program is very different from a 2010 one.
>>
>> We've only just begun figuring out the right way to write D programs.
>
> That is funny. Now and then you and Andrei talk so confidently about Go,
> C#, Haskell and other D competitors, without having written more than a
> couple of lines in those languages. At the same time, you are claiming
> that it takes years to even start to learn a programming language. Sure,
> it is not problems with D that make it difficult to use. We simply don't
> know how to program in D yet, after several years of doing just that.

I agree this seems to be a contradiction. Haskell is a fairly mature 
language building on a staunch pure functional base so many of its 
idioms have been established. C# uses rather conservative features so 
it's not difficult to learn from the perspective of the languages that 
influence it. Go is a small language that has one defining feature (the 
implicit signature conformance) that does add a certain flavor but is 
understood and has been experimented with in other languages.

D has added a lot in the direction of generics, and by their nature 
generics interact heavily with the rest of the language. I agree it is 
taking time to get to best use of such, but it's not wasted time because 
it marks real progress. For example, code using the relatively new 
template constraints is better than code that didn't use them.

> With all due respect for Andrei, I doubt that it is his book that
> completely changed the way people wrote C++ programs. It was
> influential, right, but it was really not a single factor. And some of
> ideas presented in that book are avoided by reasonable programmers.
>
> Please stop so shamelessly advertising each other. Thanks!

Sorry. Do I advertise Walter that frequently?


Andrei