D as a betterC a game changer ?

[Joakim]

On Monday, 25 December 2017 at 10:40:09 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
> On Monday, 25 December 2017 at 10:06:31 UTC, Mike Franklin 
> wrote:
>> On Sunday, 24 December 2017 at 10:11:37 UTC, Dan Partelly 
>> wrote:
>>
>>>>> D as betterC really is a game changer, for anyone who cares 
>>>>> to give it a try.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, it really is.
>>
>> The fact that -betterC exists is a glaring admission that D 
>> "got it wrong".
>
> I strongly disagree. D got it right, but when there's a heavy 
> investment in an existing code base, there has to be a strong 
> incentive to port to a different language. The less work 
> required to do so, the lower that barrier becomes.
>
> Support for inner classes was motivated by a desire to make 
> porting Java code easier. Support for COFF was motivated by 
> requests to better integrate with existing Windows toolchains. 
> extern(C), extern(C++), -betterC, and a future "Better C++" are 
> all in that vein.
>
> None of this is evidence of anything D got wrong, but rather 
> that the range of excuses for not adopting D is shrinking.

To clarify Mike's point, the dmd backend was taken from the 
existing dmc C/C++ compiler, which started in the '80s.  It 
wasn't written in D because D didn't exist back then!  The 
backend could be turned into normal GC'ed D, but Walter still 
supports dmc and I guess it's easier to just port it all to 
betterC D.

IOW, it's not a matter of what D got wrong that it needs betterC 
but what those old languages got wrong that D must adapt to, 
because of all the old C/C++ code out there.