VisualD regressions are severe; what do we do about critical infrastructure?

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On Tuesday, 15 October 2024 at 16:25:37 UTC, Manu wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Oct 2024, 01:51 Meta via Digitalmars-d, < 
> digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tuesday, 15 October 2024 at 09:07:12 UTC, Manu wrote:
>> > So, since I've been off the wagon for a couple of years;
>> > VisualD, which
>> > used to be ROCK SOLID seems to have suffered major 
>> > regressions
>> > in almost
>> > every aspect of its functionality.
>> > I think it's largely related to dmd-as-a-lib now being the
>> > foundation for a
>> > lot of tooling, and it's just criminally unstable...
>> >
>> > Rainer used to maintain his own semantic analyser used for
>> > formatting,
>> > auto-complete and suggestions, code navigation, and 
>> > debugging;
>> > it worked
>> > beautifully! But a couple years back, VisualD was switched to
>> > use DMD
>> > frontend for those duties, and it barely works anymore.
>> > The old bespoke code is still available, but it's so out of
>> > date with the
>> > modern language that it's not usable anymore.
>> >
>> > ...to make this worse; Rainer has effectively checked-out 
>> > too. We've lost another one of our finest.
>> >
>> > This is a general category of problem that's been an issue 
>> > for a long time; having unfunded one-man efforts maintain 
>> > essential infrastructure. I wonder if there are any 
>> > opportunities available to do a lot better here. Does the 
>> > dlang foundation have any budget for critical 
>> > infrastructure? And/or anyone that would even consider 
>> > working on the boring but essential stuff?
>> >
>> > Is there actually anyone here who develops on Windows? I 
>> > don't understand how it could have regressed so far, unless 
>> > it's just that nobody is using it.
>> >
>> > I now recognise a really major conundrum; I've recently
>> > returned to D to
>> > start a company with a greenfields project. VisualD failing 
>> > is
>> > essentially
>> > terminal. I'm not sure what to do.
>> > I don't have time available to try and pick up the project 
>> > and
>> > work it
>> > myself, but the current state is really pushing at the border
>> > of forcing me
>> > to completely rewrite all my code in C++ on account of 
>> > ecosystem
>> > reliability.
>> >
>> > Ideally, we really need to be properly funding development 
>> > for critical infrastructure... but I'm not sure we've ever 
>> > had a sufficient budget to maintain that sort of commitment.
>>
>> What specific problems are you hitting? I don't write much D 
>> anymore (or do really *any* hobby programming, really), but I 
>> did recently dust off one of my old projects and get it 
>> compiling again with the latest dmd. I'm on Windows 11 and 
>> using Visual Studio with Visual D, and besides it not 
>> recognizing some stuff like the shortened method syntax, I 
>> haven't really noticed any issues.
>>
>
> Syntax highlighting takes 10s of seconds, sometimes minutes, 
> and may never
> complete.
> Go-to definition for most symbols don't work.
> Press '.' after an aggregate or an enum or whatever, the list 
> that pops up
> rarely if ever shows any appropriate members or completion 
> suggestions.
> Ctrl-space (complete what I'm typing) doesn't work anymore.

That's very weird. I'm using a recent version of Visual D from a 
few months ago, and I'm not seeing *any* of the problems you've 
mentioned. Granted I haven't needed to use the debugger in 
awhile, but syntax highlighting, go to definition, the symbol 
list and autocompletion... They all work. Is it possible the 
problem is due to some Visual D/Visual Studio settings? Like I 
have the setting checked to generate the full map file for me 
project, plus the JSON file that Visual D uses for a lot of 
stuff. Other than that, I dunno.

To be honest though, were I to start a new project for a startup, 
I would go with Java without question. D is fine for hobby 
programming and smaller scale stuff, but modern Java is Good 
Enough™️ - they're even getting pattern matching now with enhanced 
switch statements. I honestly don't know why anyone uses anything 
other than Java for serious projects, unless you have hard real 
time requirements or are working with microcontrollers (which you 
are, IIRC, so). The one downside is that there are *so* many 
shitty Java programmers (many whom I have worked with), that 
picking a more niche language automatically weeds out.