Dlang is C (pretty much)

Jessica Smith routerloginsetup887 at gmail.com
Thu Dec 17 06:44:21 UTC 2020


I'm a python programmer closing in on 5 years of working with the 
language. I've dabbled in a fair number of other languages but 
Ive always come back to python.

I have some experience working with c, but that's only through 
college projects. I wanted to pick up another systems programming 
language. Something fast and close to the metal. I chose d.

The first thing that struck me as a potential pain point was the 
fact that d had very few libraries. It's community is a bit 
unresponsive. Some might say even comatose.

I wanted to start by implementing a DNS server. So I checked to 
see if there was a DNS library I could use. D didn't have one 
that would fit the bill. At this point, I was wondering if rust 
or nim would make more sense. I dismissed both those languages 
early on cause of their respective syntaxes. They are not 
aesthetically pleasing to me. Somehow, d made sense.

Here's where things got interesting.

There is an excellent c library called ldns which powers the 
drill cli. I wanted to use that. Here's how you do this in d:

Write an equivalent d file that mimics the header file of the c 
library you want to call into.

Call the function

WTF! D doesn't need extensions cause you can just use the c ones. 
Suddenly it feels like d has all of the plugins in the world as 
opposed to like three barely maintained libraries.

I wanted to speed up a python app at work. Primary motivation 
behind picking up another language. d can fit in and just work 
with python as if I had written an actual c extension library. I 
get optional gc, type checking and speed. This is hands-down the 
coolest thing I have experienced. Suddenly d makes a lot more 
sense.


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