Feq questions about the D language

[F i L]

DFGH wrote:
> I'm a C# programmer who wants to start using D as well for 
> various reasons. Is the official D compiler(DMD) matured enough 
> to be used for writing 'heavy' applications?

I'm a C# developer. DMD is very fast and compiles efficient 
binary. I get variable runtime performance results comparing DMD 
vs .NET on different hardware with modest (math related) 
benchmarks (no SIMD). GDC however, is either just-on-par or much 
faster than both on all platforms. If cross-platform is a goal, 
GDC/LDC run much more efficiently than Mono C# (in many areas). 
Performance and low-level memory control are among the main 
reasons that D sparked my interests, not having to sacrifice many 
of C# productivity features (and actually adding some) is why I 
stuck around.

Beyond performance, DMD is compiling my projects without a hitch. 
Granted they are relatively modest (mainly porting 
http://code.google.com/p/reign-sdk/). There where bugs I had with 
2.057 that where fixed in the latest release, and progress in bug 
fixing seems to have picked up, even since I've been around (few 
months).

That's not to say D is without it's rotten apples. UFCS (which is 
being added) and Property syntax are things I like much better in 
C#. The standard libraries are poorly documented in some areas 
and, in my opinion, somewhat confusingly named and over 
abbreviated. As I understand it, D's GC is also STW not 
incremental (for now), and while I've never had any major hangs 
in my programs, I understand they can occur.

If you are used to Visual Studios, I recommend MonoDevelop IDE + 
Mono-D. It's still in development, but has very nice 
code-completion and project support comparable to VS in many 
ways. Still not as good, but it's getting there, and Alex (the 
dev) works very fast.