My choice to pick Go over D ( and Rust ), mostly non-technical

[John Gabriele]

On Sunday, 4 February 2018 at 11:14:43 UTC, JN wrote:
> On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 15:06:35 UTC, Benny wrote:
>> You want to produce PDFs? fpdf 2015-Apr-06, a very limited PDF 
>> generation tool last updated 3 years go.
>>
>
> While not as trivial as just using a dub package, D easy 
> interop with C means you can use C libraries for PDF like 
> libharu or w/e.
>
>> * Are you targeting C developers?
>>
>> Sure BetterC is a way towards that but again, what do you 
>> offer more then Rust? I see C developers more going for Rust 
>> then D on this point. Or hell even Zig or Jai or whatever 3 
>> letter flavor of the month language.
>>
>
> The problem with flavor of the month languages is that people 
> switch to them, play with them for a bit and abandon them. To 
> quote Bjarne Stroustrup: "There are only two kinds of 
> languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody 
> uses". Languages like D or Java fall into the "get stuff done" 
> category. They don't try to reinvent programming, they don't 
> use the latest abstract higher order category theory union type 
> lambdas, so they are considered boring by the language-hoppers. 
> That's not a flaw of the language.
>
> Personally I agree that BetterC isn't a good alternative for C 
> programmers. Sure, you get some benefits of D, but you will 
> lose many benefits of C and you'll have to constantly fight 
> "wait, can I use this in BetterC or not" kind of thing.

What is the specific purpose of -betterC? I see from 
<https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html> that it's (A) useful when 
targeting constrained environments, and (B) for easier embedding 
of D libraries into larger projects. But I think I've read 
elsewhere in this forum that it was specifically useful for the 
DMD implementation itself.

Is betterC intended to be used for standalone "D -betterC" 
programs where C might've otherwise been used? My impression of D 
so far is that it can indeed already be used as a better C by 
avoiding the GC yourself, or invoking it yourself when 
appropriate.

It may be useful if that betterc.html page gave a rationale for 
it; to avoid any confusion on what its intended purpose is.