Reasons to use D

[Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 12 September 2015 at 18:59:11 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
Grøstad wrote:
> Array.slice create value copies, not reference views. I don't 
> think there is a "slice" for Array. :-/

Right, that's why I said "kinda similarly"... the copy is really 
important if you want to mutate it, but it is good enough for 
viewing (tho poorly performing by comparsion).

> Compile GC-based D-JS -> JavaScript + TypeScript definitions.

That's basically what my D->JS thing did back in 2011.

> The problem is that you might need a little bit of Dependent 
> Typing in order to provide types for the browser API. I.e. 
> return type depending on parameter values? Not sure.

That doesn't actually happen very often, and when it does, you 
can do a function overload like string foo(string s) { return s;} 
vs int foo(int i) { return i; } and it works in D land pretty 
well. Then use a pragma(mangle) to make both refer to the same 
browser function.

That actually worked somewhat well in my dtojs but it was a mild 
hassle too once function callbacks got more involved. You can 
template them in D but then it bloats the generated JS for no 
real reason since they all have identical dynamically typed code! 
I suppose that is solvable too but i never got around to it and 
just went back to writing normal javascript. (I write small JS 
files anyway, it is an ok language for small scripts.)