On 27-07-2012 06:56, Walter Bright wrote:
On 7/26/2012 6:18 PM, Wes wrote:
1. It has *practically forces use of the GC, since turning it off
means I can't
use many features of the language. This isn't as big of a deal to me
as it is to
many C++ devs (my assumption). A GC gives the impression of slow
managed, even
if the language isn't scripted/bytecode.
C++ doesn't have features that would require a GC - not using the GC in
D does not mean the language is crippled to be less than C++.
new and assert both result in GC allocation and are not easily replaced
with functions that use manual memory management. You have to replace
functions in druntime to get the desired effect. druntime isn't part of
the language specification, so, strictly speaking, not using the GC in D
/does/ make the language slightly more crippled than C++.
2. It doesn't have ways of introducing new syntax (e.g. $, @, #
operators or
different variable attributes like myconst).
I don't see this as a major flaw as I don't know of any other language
other
than scheme/lisp/ratchet that allow this.
We've explicitly decided not to do user defined syntax.
3. It can't run *all* forms of code at compile time.
4. It doesn't have a simple prettyprint operator. I think .stringof is
a big
step forward from .ToString() for simplicity, but obviously $variable
would be
more terse.
5. It doesn't have a way to iterate over every id in scope.
I can't think of a good reason to do this anyway.
We try not to add features just because we can - we try to do ones only
if they have compelling use cases.
--
Alex Rønne Petersen
[email protected]
http://lycus.org
