Who here actually uses D?

[Robert Clipsham]

On 02/01/11 02:18, Caligo wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 8:01 PM, Walter Bright
> <newshound2 at digitalmars.com <mailto:newshound2 at digitalmars.com>> wrote:
>
>     Caligo wrote:
>
>         I don't understand why so much time and effort as been spent,
>         perhaps wasted, on multiple compilers and standard libraries.  I
>         also don't understand why Walter insists on having his own
>         compiler when D has finally been declared an open source
>         project.  LLVM and GCC are very mature projects and they could
>         have been used for the reference implementation.  If Walter was
>         in charge of the GDC or LDC project, then we would have had a
>         better compiler than what we have today.  That way I think D as
>         a new modern programming language could have been in a much
>         better position.  You also don't need to pay people to fix bugs
>         or do whatever that is needed to be done so long as you have a
>         healthy and growing open source community.  I don't think we
>         have that yet, and perhaps the fact that Walter comes from the
>         closed-source proprietary world is part of the reason.
>
>
>     The problems D has had have rarely been the back end.
>
>
> You don't get it!  If only one back-end was used then there wouldn't be
> three different groups working on three different projects that try to
> accomplish the same thing.

Here's a great idea, why don't we make Walter spend a fortune on lawyers 
so he can work with LLVM or GCC without worrying about being sued, then 
let's get him to learn how all those thousands of lines of code work! 
That's definitely the best thing for D, it won't slow down its 
development at all.</sarcasm>

You complain about dmd not being open source enough, then say having 3 
compilers is a bad thing - that's how open source works! You get to 
choose what you work on, things will be buggy featureless and slow, that 
motivates the competition more, things progress, suddenly you've got 3 
mediocre compilers instead of 3 terrible ones. Sure, it's not so 
instantanious, you get my point though?

> Also, whenever there is a failure in communication, you end up with
> forked projects, hence Tango.

See above - if anything forks are better than seperate projects. Things 
can be merged back if they're good, people get a choice, everything can 
progress both on its own and with the rest of everything - github and 
bitbucket know this and make it simple to do.

-- 
Robert
http://octarineparrot.com/