On Sunday, 26 August 2018 at 03:17:06 UTC, Ali wrote:
As a realistic short term fix, I think both Andrei and Walter,
need to streamline and be more vocal about long term plans,
because this is obviously a source of confusion for many, and a
source for a lot of rants
My summary is that D means different things to different people.
D has put in the kitchen sink. It tries to please everyone which
means it is a complex toolbox. One thing I have learnt by lurking
in this project is how much effort goes into compiler/library
development to make it great. NoGC and safe just show how hard
that can be. Lots of work on corner cases. Maybe with hindsight D
should have been less OOP and more FP (destructuring data
anyone?), but then you lose all those who want/are used to that
paradigm.
I use quite a few languages. For me D is the most powerful
language I have for getting performance. Artem wrote Sambamba as
a student
https://github.com/biod/sambamba
and it is now running around the world in sequencing centers.
Many many CPU hours and a resulting huge carbon foot print. The
large competing C++ samtools project has been trying for 8 years
to catch up with an almost unchanged student project and they are
still slower in many cases.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sambamba-discussion/z1U7VBwKfgs
Just saying. Much better to choose D over C++. I also work on a
C++ project and I find it to be a royal pain compared to writing
software in D.
Note that Artem used the GC and only took GC out for critical
sections in parallel code. I don't buy these complaints about GC.
The complaints about breaking code I don't see that much either.
Sambamba pretty much kept compiling over the years and with
LDC/LLVM latest we see a 20% perfomance increase. For free (at
least from our perspective). Kudos to LDC/LLVM efforts!!
Very excited to see gdc pick up too. We need the GNU projects.
So, do we need change? You can always try and improve process and
over the last years W&A have been pushing for that.
Let me state here that D is anarchy driven development in all
its glory (much like the Linux kernel). I believe it is great.
I think, in addition to standard packaging in Linux distros
(which is coming), D could use more industry support (much like
the Linux kernel). D being a performance language for software
engineers I would look at the extremes of HPC and mobile to
succeed. How do we wake those companies up? Especially those with
large investments in C++. Those we should invite to Dconf.
I remember one guy at Google telling me that every time someone
would bring up "Why don't we write this in D instead?". That was
10 years ago. Google invested in Python and Go instead - but
still write heaps of code in C++. Go figure.
