D front-end in D for D

[Timon Gehr]

On 07/14/2012 05:28 PM, Gor Gyolchanyan wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 7:15 PM, Timon Gehr <timon.gehr at gmx.ch
> <mailto:timon.gehr at gmx.ch>> wrote:
>
>     On 07/14/2012 04:44 PM, Gor Gyolchanyan wrote:
>
>         On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 6:35 PM, Alex Rønne Petersen
>         <alex at lycus.org <mailto:alex at lycus.org>
>         <mailto:alex at lycus.org <mailto:alex at lycus.org>>> wrote:
>
>              On 14-07-2012 12:48, Gor Gyolchanyan wrote:
>
>                  I just got an amazing thought. If we end up getting a D
>                  front-end in D,
>                  I think it would be possible to make the back-end in
>         the same
>                  space as
>                  the code being compiled. This means, having the
>         back-end as a
>                  library
>                  solution. This would automatically provide 100%
>         compile-time code
>                  introspection. This is just a thought. Not a proposal or
>                  anything. What
>                  do you guys think?
>
>                  --
>                  Bye,
>                  Gor Gyolchanyan.
>
>
>              I can't tell if you're advocating writing a back end in D
>         as well.
>              If you are, I am strongly against this. There's a reason it has
>              taken 10 years for LLVM to get where it is, and it's still
>         far from
>              complete. We have better things to do with development of D
>         than
>              reinventing the wheel.
>
>              --
>              Alex Rønne Petersen
>         alex at lycus.org <mailto:alex at lycus.org> <mailto:alex at lycus.org
>         <mailto:alex at lycus.org>>
>
>         http://lycus.org
>
>
>         I didn't expect D to have it. D follows tons of anti-patterns, that
>         other languages have followed. It's yet another language with yet
>         another set of insignificant changes. It IS the best one of all, but
>         it's not even close to being at least minimally useful for a
>         really big
>         task.
>
>
>     Big words.
>     [snip.]
>
> Big words? Some languages are pretty much useless for generic
> type-agnostic code. They either limit to compile-time templates
> (eliminating polymorphism)

I take that to mean C++ or D.
I concur that parametric polymorphism is handy to have.

> or just refuse to support it.
> Other languages are obsessed with dynamic typing (like Python), which
> eliminate modeling power.

I don't see how that would eliminate modeling power (on the contrary).
What it constrains is static checking and runtime performance.

>
> And where is the progress here? Same semi-useful type system as C++ with
> a few sprinkles on it.
>

I was not claiming anything else. There were unsupported claims that D
is the best programming language of all and useless for a really big
task.