Hi guys. I'm sorry if this is a wrong section for my question, I'm totally new in D and D community. I'm a Qt/C++ and .NET developer. I'm keeping an eye on D's development and progress for a while. First time when I saw D, I thought wow, this is a perfect language, without bringing those complexities that comes with C++ and with great native code performance, but unfortunately my joy suddenly disapeared, because I couldn't find a reliable and nice IDE for D that I'm used to work with, such as Visual Studio and QtCreator, I couldn't find many usable third party libraries in the net and I couldn't find many informations/articles/tutorials about D, due to the lack of community. So I thought that maybe it's too early to jumpstart development in D, I'll wait until community grows, more and more developers will get involved and it will be safe to start a commercial project. I think I've waited enough :-) and decided to dare and ask about it :)

So I wanted to know how big is D community, what third party libs is avaliable for D (commercial and open source), what's the best IDE to work with D and what's D team is doing to address those issues mentioned above. I guess that, despite the fact that D is a wonderful language, without a strong community, choice of libraries and high quality development tools it won't shine with it's full potential. My primary focuses are:
1) Database libs/ORMs.

2) mature UI library (vector based ,declarative or at least to support styling like Qt stylesheet).

3) Crypto libs for hashing and with asymmetric algorithm implementations.

4) XML libraries for generating and parsing xml docs. Although XSD validation support and XSL transforms.

5) networking libs with several main protocol implementations such as Http, FTP and SMTP.

6) and of course, RAD styled IDE.

Those are the minimum of my requirements in order to start development for a platform. So guys, what do you think, will D be useful for me? :-)

P.S. what happened to Qt bindings? I saw that it was abandoned. Maybe working with trolltech/Nokia team to integrate D in QtCreator and creating and maintening Qt's D bindings would be the most awesome decision, but how achievable is it? :)

Thank you very much.
Please forgive me for my broken English

On 3/31/2012 4:23 PM, Davita wrote:

One general comment:  Lots of people ask for the stuff you're asking for.  Progress is being made on all the relevant fronts, slowly but surely.

> 1) Database libs/ORMs.

I think Steve Teale is working on something for this, but I don't know the details or how much progress is being made.

>
> 2) mature UI library (vector based ,declarative or at least to support
> styling like Qt stylesheet).

I think QtD is now usable since the relevant compiler bugs were ironed out.

>
> 3) Crypto libs for hashing and with asymmetric algorithm implementations.

You would probably be best off linking to a C library for this.  The headers are in Deimos.  https://github.com/D-Programming-Deimos/openssl

>
> 4) XML libraries for generating and parsing xml docs. Although XSD
> validation support and XSL transforms.

Phobos has a pretty rudimentary XML lib.  Tango's been ported to D2, though.  You could try it. https://github.com/SiegeLord/Tango-D2

>
> 5) networking libs with several main protocol implementations such as
> Http, FTP and SMTP.

std.net.curl was just added to the latest Phobos release.

>
> 6) and of course, RAD styled IDE.

Visual D might do what you want.

>
> Those are the minimum of my requirements in order to start development
> for a platform. So guys, what do you think, will D be useful for me? :-)
>
> P.S. what happened to Qt bindings? I saw that it was abandoned. Maybe
> working with trolltech/Nokia team to integrate D in QtCreator and
> creating and maintening Qt's D bindings would be the most awesome
> decision, but how achievable is it? :)

I personally don't use QtD, so I don't know where it's hosted, but a lot of stuff that was on dsource has moved to Github.  If it looks abandoned on dsource, it may have been migrated.

On Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 20:23:47 UTC, Davita wrote:
> I couldn't find a reliable and nice IDE for D that I'm used to work with, such as Visual Studio and QtCreator

Try Mono-D, it's a MonoDevelop addon with code-completion and project management. Plus, debugging (though gdb) on Linux.

http://mono-d.alexanderbothe.com/

>>
>> 4) XML libraries for generating and parsing xml docs. Although XSD
>> validation support and XSL transforms.
>
> Phobos has a pretty rudimentary XML lib. Tango's been ported to D2,
> though. You could try it. https://github.com/SiegeLord/Tango-D2
>

You should maybe also mention, https://github.com/adamdruppe/misc-stuff-including-D-programming-language-web-stuff/blob/master/dom.d
and http://opticron.no-ip.org/svn/branches/kxml/

>>
>> 5) networking libs with several main protocol implementations such as
>> Http, FTP and SMTP.
>
> std.net.curl was just added to the latest Phobos release.
>

"nazriel" is also working on a "http and other protocols" lib (but in D, with no curl ...), but I don't know the current state, https://github.com/nazriel/netd

On 4/1/12, dsimcha <dsimcha@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I think QtD is now usable since the relevant compiler bugs were ironed out.

I doubt that it even compiles. The last update was almost a year ago, and I've had access violations with D2 back then.

On Sunday, 1 April 2012 at 07:53:37 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
> On 4/1/12, dsimcha <dsimcha@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I think QtD is now usable since the relevant compiler bugs were ironed out.
>
> I doubt that it even compiles. The last update was almost a year ago,
> and I've had access violations with D2 back then.

Well, that's what i'm talking about. D is such a wonderful language that it should scream on different forums and sites such as stackoverflow or codeproject, but instead it's very quite, passive. And I think this is due to the lack of quality development tools. :(
None of the companies or organizations I know would never start development on DWT or QtD. Shouldn't D team address those issues? I mean, only enthusiasmic community can't do much here. I think a sponsor or some commercial interest is a must, or as I already mentioned above, to work with Nokia guys and bring D with QtCreator. Or maybe to work with MS and integrate D in VS and WinRT api. If one big organization starts using D, then more and more people will have trust in D and start using it. Otherwise I don't think the future of D will be as bright as it should :(

On Sun, 01 Apr 2012 12:12:43 +0200
"Davita" <dato1100@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Well, that's what i'm talking about. D is such a wonderful language that it should scream on different forums and sites such as stackoverflow or codeproject, but instead it's very quite, passive. And I think this is due to the lack of quality development tools. :(

Well, Andrej is heavily working on new wxD...that's definitely something for C++, although not necessarily, Qt developer. ;)


Sincerely,
Gour


-- 
There is no work that affects Me; nor do I aspire for the fruits of action. One who understands this truth about Me also does not become entangled in the fruitive reactions of work.

http://atmarama.net | Hlapicina (Croatia) | GPG: 52B5C810

On 2012-04-01 00:13, dsimcha wrote:
> On 3/31/2012 4:23 PM, Davita wrote:

>> 3) Crypto libs for hashing and with asymmetric algorithm implementations.
>
> You would probably be best off linking to a C library for this. The
> headers are in Deimos. https://github.com/D-Programming-Deimos/openssl

Tango has some kind of support for cryptography.

>> 5) networking libs with several main protocol implementations such as
>> Http, FTP and SMTP.
>
> std.net.curl was just added to the latest Phobos release.

Tango also have some net related modules.

>>
>> 6) and of course, RAD styled IDE.
>
> Visual D might do what you want.

You could also have a look at the Eclipse plugin DDT: http://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/ddt/

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On 4/1/2012 7:12 PM, Davita wrote:
> On Sunday, 1 April 2012 at 07:53:37 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
>> On 4/1/12, dsimcha <dsimcha@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> I think QtD is now usable since the relevant compiler bugs were
>>> ironed out.
>>
>> I doubt that it even compiles. The last update was almost a year ago,
>> and I've had access violations with D2 back then.
>
> Well, that's what i'm talking about. D is such a wonderful language that
> it should scream on different forums and sites such as stackoverflow or
> codeproject, but instead it's very quite, passive. And I think this is
> due to the lack of quality development tools. :(
> None of the companies or organizations I know would never start
> development on DWT or QtD. Shouldn't D team address those issues? I
> mean, only enthusiasmic community can't do much here. I think a sponsor
> or some commercial interest is a must, or as I already mentioned above,
> to work with Nokia guys and bring D with QtCreator. Or maybe to work
> with MS and integrate D in VS and WinRT api. If one big organization
> starts using D, then more and more people will have trust in D and start
> using it. Otherwise I don't think the future of D will be as bright as
> it should :(

The core D "team" already have enough on their plates in developing the DMD compiler, DRuntime, and Phobos. There's just not enough manpower there to go off on tangents, however beneficial they may be. It's a matter of priorities. For the time being, that sort of thing has to be community-driven. The situation now is a far sight better than it used to be.

Eventually, the tool chain will be there and those who can't live without all of the frilly bells and whistles will be satisfied. Until that time, those of us who *can* live without all of that can use D quite happily. And the more of us who do, the closer we get to Nirvana. Baby steps and all that.

On Sunday, 1 April 2012 at 10:12:45 UTC, Davita wrote:

>  Or maybe to work with MS and integrate D in VS and WinRT api.

Or an MS employee can try it on their own:

http://www.reddit.com/tb/ow7qc