On Saturday, 2 January 2016 at 00:56:42 UTC, tsbockman wrote:
On Saturday, 2 January 2016 at 00:20:37 UTC, Jason Jeffory
wrote:
I think maybe one of the problems with D is that there seems
to be no focused backing of official d libs that are required
to create apps.
e.g., GUI, Audio, Graphics, etc...
If the D community could decide to officially support(with a
distinct web page for such things) such libraries, real
progress might be made.
So much work is done on the compiler itself but most of the
actually things required to make real world use of the
compiler are neglected, It's left up to individuals to do the
work and make all the choices.
But there is a different mentality that happens when it's
"Official". Others are more willing to support, develop, and
use it.
Is this at all possible in the D community?
Making a competitive GUI library is a MASSIVE task. While there
are some usable options available for D currently, I think the
most desirable solution is to make a high quality Qt binding.
Various people have looked into doing so in the past, but I
think they were stalled by D's immature C++ interop. There have
been great strides forward in this area recently, and work is
ongoing. I'd bet a Qt binding will be viable within a year or
two, if it's not already.
As to graphics - it depends on your use case. If you're
thinking of 3D simulations and games, I was under the
impression that the D ecosystem already covers the basics
(OpenGL, SDL, SFML) fairly well.
I'm not sure about audio.
More generally, though - there is a lot of work going into the
compiler and the standard library because they need it quite
badly. With basic issues like safe non-GC memory management yet
unresolved, I don't think it would yet be beneficial to D in
the long run to shift attention away towards other parts of the
ecosystem.
The C++ interop, especially, will do far more to expand the D
ecosystem than the relatively small team working on it could
possibly accomplish by just writing more D libraries.
I think you misunderstand. I realize that D has a ton of library
solutions... I am talking about having the "top dogs" come out
and decide to support one or the other "officially" and try to
turn it into something that people can use knowing that it is
"supported".
D, as a compiler, might be amazing but without any proper tools
to make it do things that are common, it won't be used much. By
proper, I mean "officially supported". (basically it means Walter
and Andrei come out and decide to support one of the current
packages or to start the push on a new one)
