half datatype?

[Rob T]

On Monday, 19 November 2012 at 19:14:43 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
wrote:
> I'd never even _heard_ of half types before this discussion 
> came up. But then
> again, the same goes for SIMD. And IIRC, there was some sort of 
> function
> attribute relating to pointers and registers that you or some 
> other gaming
> person was insisting on a while back, and I'd never heard of it 
> existing in
> C++ either (as an extension or otherwise). You clearly program 
> in a very
> different world than I do. I care about high performance in 
> what I do but
> nothing on _that_ level. I suspect that this is another one of 
> those things
> that certain folks would really like to have, and most of the 
> rest of us don't
> have any real interest in and often know nothing about in the 
> first place. I
> don't know that I really care whether it's added to the 
> language though. I'll
> leave that sort of decision up to Walter.
>
> If anything, I just find it interesting how many low level 
> things folks like
> you keep coming up with as must-haves or very strong wants that 
> I've never
> even heard of and will almost certainly never care about aside 
> perhaps from
> how having them in D might help D catch on.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis

Anyone interested in the low precision float types, and what they 
are good for, can start here
http://www.opengl.org/wiki/Small_Float_Formats

I did not read through all of this thread, but my guess is that 
the people making the request for half float are mostly into game 
development and image processing.

When I first started investigating D as a potential C++ 
replacement, I noted that a lot of the "visible" development 
(what I could see being publicized) was game development, so it 
seemed that for some reason a lot of the D users were also game 
developers, so there's perhaps something about D that they find 
attractive.

Why game devs are interested so much in D is interesting 
considering the GC is noted to be a problem for game devs. The 
work of H. S. Teoh comes to mind with his work on a game engine, 
that pushed the limits of the GC and std lib.

In any case, the point is that I don't think the D community 
should overlook what the game devs are doing, they're pushing D 
to its limits and are making D more visible than perhaps anyone.

--rt