On Tuesday, 14 July 2015 at 08:54:42 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
Now one may say that this isn't all he was saying, that the GC in D can be improved, that D could be safer, and so on. But it's hardly fair to suggest the original poster is not right about one of the advantages of D vs C and C++.
The linked webpage explicitly states that C UB for integer overflow gives 2x performance in some scenarios. Something these forums have tried to play down many times.
You have compiler-options/libraries/tools for C++ that allows you to write as safe and safer code than D (which lacks sanitizers) at the cost of performance and convenience. Just like D defaults sacrifice performance for the same, but D tries to give priority to convenience. Which C++ does not have much of (convenience that is). C++ has an impressive range of options that beats all alternatives in the flexibility-department, but also high complexity levels and tedious syntax.
It is just that if you use C++ over Java you do it because you need performance and deliberately through-and-through avoid those features/library/compiler options/tools and resort writing code that is less robust. My C++ libraries do void casts and lots of other low level stuff, not because C++-eco system does not provide robust alternatives, but in order to work with raw memory. I would never dream of doing that in a language like Go or Java. I do it because I _need_ the performance that C/C++ brings and also need to tailor low level constructs/hardware/OS. Which I could not do at all in Go/Java.
If you do the same in D, you are in the same boat as C++, except C++ is more tedious and C++ provide sanitizers.
But there are restricted and annotated versions of C that offers provable safety at the cost of development time, but with C performance. Thus is much better than D for _secure_ performant system level programming since you also have both termination and run-time guarantees.
Of course, nobody use D for critical system level programming, so that is not really an issue in the forseeable future.
Good enough rebuttal? Slamdunk C/C++ for the right reasons: complexity and tedium. Complexity and tedium make people more likely to make fatal mistakes... but that's ergonomics, not semantics.
