new frontend written in D

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Thursday, September 29, 2011 13:35:03 Gor Gyolchanyan wrote:
> Right. And if the compiler is written in D, it's much more readable
> and maintainable and it will gain much more volunteer manpower, since
> it's so easy to work on.

While the compiler probably would be easier to work on if it were written in 
D, I honestly don't think that it would be enough of an improvement to really 
make that much of a difference in volunteer manpower, unless we were dealing 
with a bunch of potential volunteers who knew D but not C++. The issue with 
working on the compiler is understanding what the code is trying to do and how 
it works, not the fact that it's written C++ rather than D.

The primary advantage is in having a lexer and parser that any program can 
then use, because then it makes it much easier to create tools which can 
process D code. The compiler itself isn't really going to gain much by being 
in D.

- Jonathan m Davis