Future of D

[Bastiaan Veelo]

On Sunday, 13 December 2020 at 19:33:30 UTC, Max Haughton wrote:
> I really think properly killing the GC

What do you mean by this? What would take its place, and what 
practical steps would need to be taken? And above all, how can 
the language and library features that rely on the GC today be 
replaced by alternatives that are as appealing?

> would give us a big boost in fresh blood to the community. It 
> would still be there, but it's a huge turn off to new users.

I don’t understand, when it’s still there, GCfobics will still 
think there is reason to look elsewhere. There are various ways 
to use D without garbage collection today, so it is important to 
define what this imaginary language will look like.

I don’t think there is a boatload of fresh blood just waiting for 
a different D even if is has a GC that has been killed.

I love the features that are enabled by the GC and I love not 
needing to worry about the problems that manual memory management 
brings.

Above all, I just don’t buy that “it's a huge turn off to new 
users”.

I think D hits the sweet spot with a pluggable, configurable, 
profilable and optional garbage collector!

— Bastiaan.