C++ to D explainer

[tsbockman via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 22 October 2015 at 22:29:03 UTC, Jesse Phillips 
wrote:
> On Thursday, 22 October 2015 at 03:34:17 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> Someone needs to write up a good translation of a C++ project 
>> to D, showing how the code is better in D and particularly 
>> demonstrating D idioms instead.  The ongoing DDMD project, 
>> translating the dmd frontend from C++ to D, may be a good 
>> project for this, or someone might just want to translate some 
>> other small to mid-size C++ project instead.  A blog post 
>> explaining what they did would be very worthwhile.
>
> Using the DMD translation for this may not be the best code 
> base. It has been said that Walter writes his C++ in a D style. 
> If nothing else, it is not what people "into" C++ would 
> consider C++ style.

Also, DDMD is nowhere close to being idiomatic D yet; it's got 
raw pointers all over the place, often uses `int` rather than 
`bool`, all the functions are marked `extern (C++)`, use of 
Phobos is forbidden, etc.

The first step was just to get it working. Refactoring the code 
base into natural, streamlined D code will be a long process - 
especially since fixing bugs, adding new features, and avoiding 
regressions are all higher priorities for almost everyone working 
on it.