too early for D2 and too late for D1

[jasonw]

Caligo Wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 2:52 PM, jasonw <user at webmails.org> wrote:
> > Gour-Gadadhara Dasa Wrote:
> >
> >> Well, http://d-programming-language.org/ page says: "D is a multi-
> >> paradigm programming language that combines a principled approach
> >> with a focus on *practicality*." and in my case I've *practical* need to
> >> write GUI app.
> >
> > That's certainly true, if you think of the potential D2 provides. In 5 -- 20 years D will be a serious contestant and mature implementations beat C++ and traditional languages in many domains. Currently DMD produces much slower executables especially for high performance computing so you would be a total idiot to use D if the project time frame is less than 2 years.
> >
> > If you want to build some fortune 500 website from scratch, D doesn't deliver the functionality you need right now. The PHP/Java/C# platforms have hundreds of millions worth funding backing them.
> >
> > If you build a desktop application, D isn't the best choice, but you can still argue to your boss to use it instead because of your personal "productivity" issues. There's no other logical reason to use D instead of C++/Qt or some other mature GUI toolkit.
> >
> > Bloated executables aren't suitable for embedded platforms either, but in 10 -- 20 years we will have a D compiler that targets platforms with less than 4 MB of RAM+ROM. I find it unlike that we have a reliable D compiler for very small 32-bit embedded devices in 5 years.
> >
> 
> 5 to 20 years? 10 to 20 years?  How do you come up with those big and
> depressing numbers?

I'd like to be more optimistic, but I'm comparing the development to projects such as LLVM. The ultimate performance goal isn't static. The leading compilers and languages are getting better so the goal is also going higher with every new release of GCC, Fortran compilers, and LLVM.

Don't get me wrong, D is already much faster than many "toy" languages. Faster than Java and C# in some applications. What's relevant is that the C/C++/Fortran users will only switch if D provides concrete performance improvements over their *existing* toolchains. It has taken LLVM several years and they're not yet even on par with GCC in all benchmarks.

The web application issue depends on the amount of libraries. It's a community issue. The main embedded issue is code bloat. Nobody has come up with a proof of concept solution to typeinfo and template bloat. It's impossible to think it will be solved without proof of concept in less than 5 years. You disagree?