"dsimcha" <dsim...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:hvjno9$2oq...@digitalmars.com... > == Quote from Justin Johansson (n...@spam.com)'s article >> Me thinks this both a polite question and a question due of realistic >> answers. >> How doth thou respond? > > My brutally honest but not overly pessimistic view is that D will become > fairly > popular in "high-level" systems programming and scientific and game > programming, > but will fail to make substantial inroads into "low-level" systems > programming or > most application programming. >
I think that sounds like a fairly reasonable analysis. > For the lower-level systems programming case, the requirement for > a runtime (even if it's a fairly lightweight one) and the lack of fine > control > over things like binary size (due to templates, etc.) will limit > usefulness. Yes, > these problems can be worked around, but doing so requires sticking to so > much of > a C-like subset that you may as well just use C. > (Way) Back when I was a C/C++ programmer, I found D's module system alone to be worth abandoning C/C++. Everything else was icing on the cake. And there are other things that would also be an improvement for these developers: better alternatives to preprocessor macros, underscores in numeric literals, improved const/immutable system. So, while I agree that many of them would need to use a limited C-ish subset of D, I do think it would still be worthwhile for many of them to switch. But of course, as for how many of them will actually agree, I'm not sure. Also, I predict Bjarne Stroustrup will become even more absurdly defensive of C++'s anachronisms and cruft than he already seems to be ;)