I'm back from OSCON 2012, where my talk has enjoyed a somewhat unexpected good reception (OSCON is not the most down-D's-alley audience).

The talk abstract is at http://www.oscon.com/oscon2012/public/schedule/detail/23888 and the slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/andreialexandrescu1/generic-programming-galore-using-d. There will be a video up some time in the future for the entire talk.

It would be really cool if we could enhance D's offering in the Web arena. People were really attracted by the notion of a language not requiring many type annotations, yet with the exploratory feel of a dynamic language. A small framework or simply a couple of standard library components that would make e.g. Vladimir's work (on forum.lang.org) or Adam Ruppe's work easy to assemble from preexisting parts would be just awesome.

Go has enjoyed a stronger presence in numbers: http://www.oscon.com/oscon2012/public/schedule/detail/23910, http://www.oscon.com/oscon2012/public/schedule/detail/23906, but my perception (confirmed by ratings) is that the reception has been a tad colder.


Cheers,

Andrei

Am 21.07.2012 07:14, schrieb Andrei Alexandrescu:
> I'm back from OSCON 2012, where my talk has enjoyed a somewhat
> unexpected good reception (OSCON is not the most down-D's-alley audience).
>
> The talk abstract is at
> http://www.oscon.com/oscon2012/public/schedule/detail/23888 and the
> slides are at
> http://www.slideshare.net/andreialexandrescu1/generic-programming-galore-using-d.
> There will be a video up some time in the future for the entire talk.
>

Thanks for putting them up. Eagerly waiting for the video.

> It would be really cool if we could enhance D's offering in the Web
> arena. People were really attracted by the notion of a language not
> requiring many type annotations, yet with the exploratory feel of a
> dynamic language. A small framework or simply a couple of standard
> library components that would make e.g. Vladimir's work (on
> forum.lang.org) or Adam Ruppe's work easy to assemble from preexisting
> parts would be just awesome.

We need something like std.database for web development, which as far as
I know is currently on hold.

WinRT support would also be a nice feature. Need to spend some time checking how to work with type libraries.

>
> Go has enjoyed a stronger presence in numbers:
> http://www.oscon.com/oscon2012/public/schedule/detail/23910,
> http://www.oscon.com/oscon2012/public/schedule/detail/23906, but my
> perception (confirmed by ratings) is that the reception has been a tad
> colder.
>

Go earns a lot of brownie points from geeks due to Google factor and having Plan 9 authors in the team.

I've watched most of their presentations, to be honest their typical web application PR demo with goroutines, can be easily reproduced in many languages.

Even the features that are sold as why one should pick Go, are no
novelty for the developers that have good CS backgrounds in compiler
design and implementation.

I already had many discussions on gonuts regarding lack of abstractions in the language like enumerations and generics, or the distinction between make and new.

The Go community seems to think it is ok to make use of code generation tools, like the C++ compiler vendors used to do until around 1993,
when preprocessor tricks and external tools were used as a kind of generics.

With Go 2, years away this situation is hardly going to change.

After becoming disapointed with Go leaving in the past, I've come to the conclusion that between the two, D is a much better choice.

--
Paulo

On Saturday, July 21, 2012 08:48:57 Paulo Pinto wrote:
> After becoming disapointed with Go leaving in the past, I've come to the conclusion that between the two, D is a much better choice.

I still need to study up on Go one of these days (along with a variety of other languages which are on my to-learn list), but the more I learn about it, the less I understand why Go and D are treated as competitors. I guess it's because of the systems language moniker (though Go doesn't mean it in the same was as C++ and D, so that skews things already), but Go and D are just so radically different in their basic approaches and philosophies, that I would expect that the folks who like one would dislike the other in most cases. They're just so completely different that I wouldn't expect them to really compete with one another save for the fact that developers only have so much time to check out new languages, so if one's getting a lot more attention, that could reduce how many people check out the other one, even if most people who check out the first one don't end up liking it.

- Jonathan M Davis

Am 21.07.2012 10:20, schrieb Jonathan M Davis:
> On Saturday, July 21, 2012 08:48:57 Paulo Pinto wrote:
>> After becoming disapointed with Go leaving in the past, I've come to the
>> conclusion that between the two, D is a much better choice.
>
> I still need to study up on Go one of these days (along with a variety of
> other languages which are on my to-learn list), but the more I learn about it,
> the less I understand why Go and D are treated as competitors. I guess it's
> because of the systems language moniker (though Go doesn't mean it in the same
> was as C++ and D, so that skews things already), but Go and D are just so
> radically different in their basic approaches and philosophies, that I would
> expect that the folks who like one would dislike the other in most cases.
> They're just so completely different that I wouldn't expect them to really
> compete with one another save for the fact that developers only have so much
> time to check out new languages, so if one's getting a lot more attention,
> that could reduce how many people check out the other one, even if most people
> who check out the first one don't end up liking it.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis


Go is an evolution of Limbo (http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/limbo.html), where ADTs got replaced by interfaces coupled with method declarations syntax from Component Pascal (http://www.oberon.ch/pdf/CP-Lang.pdf), an extension to Oberon.

If you spend some time reading Inferno and Limbo documentation after learning Go, you'll see how they share so many concepts.

http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno/books/inferno_programming_with_limbo/

Regarding systems programming, Go could actually play in the same league as D, since Oberon was used to write the Native Oberon and A2 operating systems. Besides the assembly for the GC and boot, everything else is written in Oberon.

As a personal workstation the system was used a lot by the ETHZ researchers during the 90's. A quite cool environment where you get a Smalltalk like environment, with a strong typed language.

Nowadays it is mainly used to teach OS principles at ETHZ, and embedded systems development.

You can read more it here,
http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/native/WebScreen.html        (screenshots)
http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/ProjectOberon.pdf  (how it was implemented)
http://www.astrobe.com/Oberon.htm (embedded systems support)

The trick with Oberon, which Go also uses, is to have a special module
reckognised by the compiler with primitives to do the low tricks C offers. Additionaly any function/method without body can be implemented in Assembly. This is nothing new, Modula-2 already worked like this.

What I miss from Go, and is what makes me like more of D is,

- enumerations
- exceptions
- metaprogramming
- generics
- dynamic loading
- constness
- operator overloading
- method overloading
- support for FP

Basically everything that has become part of the enterprise world since
the late 90's.

Wirth has a nice paper where we describes the evolution of the languages he designed, stating on the chapter 7, that Oberon failed in the industry because companies preferred the code bloat of other languages instead of Oberon's simplicity.

http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/Articles/Modula-Oberon-June.pdf

This is exactly the same school of thought that Go designers follow. If
language design would be considered art, they would probably be part of
the Minimalism mouvement.

--
Paulo

On 2012-07-21 06:48:57 +0000, Paulo Pinto <pjmlp@progtools.org> said:

> We need something like std.database for web development, which as far as
> I know is currently on hold.
> 
> WinRT support would also be a nice feature. Need to spend some time checking how to work with type libraries.

The web is a low-hanging fruit for D. The language is already very suitable for it: being able to talk to C APIs, socket IO, and starting external processes plenty enough. All it needs really is some library code.

Supporting WinRT, or Cocoa, in any pleasant way is a much bigger project. Both these APIs use OO extensively and, while they are accessible from C, dealing with such code using C functions is a pain. I'm convinced that what D needs is direct support for new object models in the language. The good news is that semantically both the WinRT model and the Cocoa model of an object are close enough to the D model -- single inheritance, one root object -- and I've shown with my experimental DMD/Objective-C branch[1] that such a model integrates quite well to D despite the differences. In fact, WinRT, being based on COM, would probably map better than Cocoa.

[1]: http://michelf.ca/projects/d-objc/

So in short, to be successful in GUI development, D need to support the native object model of the GUI platform it runs on without having to jump through hoops and without having a complicated layer of bindings. Using D code within a GUI app should be as easy as using C++ code within it would be. Otherwise, you cannot really compete.

And also, more and more it'd require ARM support to be competitive in the GUI area.

Compare those requirements to those of web development, were almost all servers are x86, where C, socket IO, and execution of external processes is all that's needed interface with other components, and you'll see that web dev is truly the low-hanging fruit in terms of market for D.

-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin@michelf.ca
http://michelf.ca/

On Saturday, 21 July 2012 at 13:47:06 UTC, Michel Fortin wrote:
> The web is a low-hanging fruit for D.

Yea, I've been eating that fruit for years.

While my libs are out there, I haven't gotten around to
doing the rest of the documentation or anything. My libraries
are just a means to an end to me. They get the job done, so
I focus on the job, and then I have other stuff the rest of
my time.

But there's people who have used my libs regardless so if
you are interested, here it is:

https://github.com/adamdruppe/misc-stuff-including-D-programming-language-web-stuff

On 7/21/12 10:08 AM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> On Saturday, 21 July 2012 at 13:47:06 UTC, Michel Fortin wrote:
>> The web is a low-hanging fruit for D.
>
> Yea, I've been eating that fruit for years.
>
> While my libs are out there, I haven't gotten around to
> doing the rest of the documentation or anything. My libraries
> are just a means to an end to me. They get the job done, so
> I focus on the job, and then I have other stuff the rest of
> my time.
>
> But there's people who have used my libs regardless so if
> you are interested, here it is:
>
> https://github.com/adamdruppe/misc-stuff-including-D-programming-language-web-stuff

Would you agree if someone took your code, modified it for the purposes of passing it through the forks of the review process, and pushed it into Phobos?

You'd still receive credit, of course, but it would be shared with that person or group because that's significant work.

Let us know - thanks!


Andrei

On Sat, 21 Jul 2012 09:47:06 -0400
Michel Fortin <michel.fortin@michelf.ca> wrote:
> 
> And also, more and more it'd require ARM support to be competitive in the GUI area.
> 

Yes. But there's an even bigger reason for ARM: Mobile devices, like iOS and Android. I'm not personally a fan of them, but nonetheless those things are HUGE (no pun intended). And yet the ONLY real language choices there are C++, Java and Objective-C (and Lua if you count "Son-of-Flash", ie Corona - which I don't count). And half of THOSE are out of the question if you want cross platform, which any sane developer should. So PERFECT fertile ground for D.

I know I keep harping on that, but it's a big issue for me since I'm
deep into that stuff now and goddamn do I wish I could be doing
it in D, but D's support on those devices (or just outputting C/C++)
unfortunately just isn't mature enough ATM.

On 7/21/12 1:14 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> I'm back from OSCON 2012, where my talk has enjoyed a somewhat
> unexpected good reception (OSCON is not the most down-D's-alley audience).
>
> The talk abstract is at
> http://www.oscon.com/oscon2012/public/schedule/detail/23888 and the
> slides are at
> http://www.slideshare.net/andreialexandrescu1/generic-programming-galore-using-d.
> There will be a video up some time in the future for the entire talk.

Slides are being discussed on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/wxjv0/generic_programming_galore_using_d/

Andrei

On 21-07-2012 21:51, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Jul 2012 09:47:06 -0400
> Michel Fortin <michel.fortin@michelf.ca> wrote:
>>
>> And also, more and more it'd require ARM support to be competitive in
>> the GUI area.
>>
>
> Yes. But there's an even bigger reason for ARM: Mobile devices, like
> iOS and Android. I'm not personally a fan of them, but nonetheless those
> things are HUGE (no pun intended). And yet the ONLY real language
> choices there are C++, Java and Objective-C (and Lua if you count
> "Son-of-Flash", ie Corona - which I don't count). And half of THOSE are
> out of the question if you want cross platform, which any sane developer
> should. So PERFECT fertile ground for D.

... and C# ;)

>
> I know I keep harping on that, but it's a big issue for me since I'm
> deep into that stuff now and goddamn do I wish I could be doing
> it in D, but D's support on those devices (or just outputting C/C++)
> unfortunately just isn't mature enough ATM.
>

GDC is pretty far along as far as ARM support goes; I intend to have another run through it one of these days to look at any remaining issues.

-- 
Alex Rønne Petersen
alex@lycus.org
http://lycus.org