D is dead (was: Dicebot on leaving D: It is anarchy driven development in all its glory.)

[Dominikus Dittes Scherkl]

On Friday, 24 August 2018 at 22:16:25 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Friday, August 24, 2018 7:46:57 AM MDT Mike Franklin via 
> Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> On Friday, 24 August 2018 at 13:21:25 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
>> wrote:
>> > I think that you're crazy.
>>
>> No, I just see more potential in D than you do.
>
> To be clear, I'm not calling you crazy in general. I'm calling 
> the idea of bypassing libc to call syscalls directly under any 
> kind of normal circumstances crazy. There is tons of work to be 
> done around here to improve D, and IMHO, reimplementing OS 
> functions just because they're written in C is a total waste of 
> time and an invitation for bugs - in addition to making the 
> druntime code that much less portable, since it bypasses the 
> API layer that was standardized for POSIX systems. It's the 
> kind of thing that's going to cause us way more work, more 
> bugs, and make us that much less compatible with existing 
> libraries. And for what? To _maybe_ get slightly better 
> performance (which you probably won't get)? I honestly think 
> that trying to bypass libc to talk to the kernel directly is 
> actively worse than just using libc much as it would be great 
> if we somehow lived in a world where every library we used was 
> written in D. But the reality of the matter is that there is a 
> _lot_ out there already written in C where it simply makes no 
> sense to try to replace it. We're always going to need to 
> interoperate with C unless we somehow convince all of the C 
> developers to at least switch to -betterC (which obviously 
> isn't happening).
>
> - Jonathan M Davis

You're underestimating the benefits. It's not just to be 
eventually slightly faster. It makes @safe versions possible, 
this in turn avoids a lot of @trusted calls, so reduces review 
effort. It allows also to develop own kernels (for maybe new 
hardware) without needing a c-toolchain an it makes D more self 
contained. There are certainly more advantages. And if you don't 
like it, the c stuff remains there for you to use.