On Saturday, 12 July 2014 at 10:27:12 UTC, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Fri, 2014-07-11 at 16:54 +0000, Chris via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> […]
>> I remember Java used to be "theeee" best thing ever. After years of using it, however, I found out how restricted the language was / is. Still, it's been a success, because people believed all the propaganda. What matters to me is not so much the odd fancy feature, it's how well the language performs in general purpose programming. Go was designed for servers and thus will always have one up on D or any other language at that matter. But could I use Go for what I have used D? Not so sure about that. Also, like Java Go is a closed thing. D isn't. Once I read about D that it shows what can be done "once you take a language out of the hands of a committee". Go, like Java, will finally end up in a cul de sac and will have a hard time trying to get out of it. Not because the language is inherently bad, because it's in the hand of a committee. Ideology kills a language. But it doesn't matter, because people will use Go or whatever anyway, will _have_ to use it.
>
> People believed the FORTRAN propaganda, the COBOL propaganda, the Pascal
> propaganda. I think we ought to distinguish good marketing from hype.
> Java had good marketing, was in the right place at the right time, and
> had a huge amount of hype as well.
>
> If Go is better for server things than D then might as well stop trying
> to use D at all.
>
> Go was actually designed as a better C with CSP for concurrency and
> parallelism.
>
> Go, D, Rust, C++, C, Haskell,… are all just programming languages that
> create native code executable. Thus they are all in the same category
> regarding potential usage. Everything else is about whether the
> programmer likes and uses well, the language.
>
> If Go and Java are closed languages, so is D. All three have open source
> repositories and people can submit changes via pull requests. All three
> have committees comprising the people who have commit rights to the
> mainline and they are the only people who can actually change the
> language.

But D is much more open to discussion and features are implemented faster, as far as I see. If I think about Java, that it took them ages to implement useful features like enumerations. Go ruled out templates, if I remember correctly. It's this kind of ideological / dictatorial attitude I don't like. Of course, Walter has the veto of death, it's his child after all. But there is far more flexibility. In the D community people listen to each other and trust each other's judgements and user experiences (or we wisely shut up, if they have no expertise on a certain topic).

> I think I have to repeat the point about irony here regarding
> ideology :-)
>
>> What I'm taking issue with is that everybody focuses on the flaws of D (every language has flaws), which often gives the impression that it's an unfinished, stay-away business. It's not. D can be used, and I've used it, for production code. It's more mature than D or Rust and it is superior to other languages like Java (no OO-ideology for example). Mind you, D is a hindsight language, which makes it wiser. Does it have flaws? Yes. I come across them sometimes. Is there a language without flaws? If there is, tell me about it. Talking about hindsight, I've tried many different languages, I like D because of what it has to offer for general purpose programming, it compiles natively, interfaces with C at no cost at all, it has strong modelling power, features that users require are added. I may sound like a zealot (see "irony"), but I'm not. I'm very pragmatic, D is a good tool and, being community driven, there is a real chance of making it a fantastic tool. Individual features are not everything.
>
> Go folk have exactly the same view and argument regarding Go. Java folk
> have exactly the same view and argument regarding Java – well except for
> the compiles to native code bit, obviously. ;-)
>
> In the end it is about community rather than the programming language
> per se. Java created a huge community that was evangelical. Go has
> rapidly created an active community that is evangelical. Python has
> rapidly created a large evangelical community. D has slowly created a
> small community that hasn't as yet created the outward looking
> evangelical aspect. Where are the user groups having local meetings is
> my main metric. Java definitely, Go definitely, C++ sort of, D no. This
> is the real problem for D I feel. Without local user groups meeting up
> you don't get exposure and you don't get traction in the market.
>
[snip]

You are right of course, but that was not my point at all. My point was that we have to stop the constant D-bashing. One flaw (or perceived flaw) is blown out of proportion and used to discard the language as useless, which it is not. What H.S. Teoh described is true, you can start with script like stuff in D and it scales later. I've been doing the same thing for a while now. I no longer use Python or the like, I just use D, and if it's just for a regex filter.

There are three things involved here, one is that people opposed to D are willing to put up with whatever flaws in other languages, but have no mercy when they detect a flaw in D, which leads us to point two: I suppose people don't "trust" D, because it has no big company behind it (so it cannot be good, it's not "authoritative", in other words D doesn't wear suit an tie). Third, we don't emphasize the good things about D enough (see H. S. Teoh's list). I can imagine that people are (ironically enough!) put off by D, because they think it is too difficult, too nerdy (cf. templates, ranges). It's true, it takes time to grasp some of D's more advanced features. But D can be used in a simple way for simple things (cf. script like programs). If someone is thinking about writing a program that does some number crunching in C (say for signal processing), why not use D instead of C or Python (God forbid!)? It can later be extended or improved. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to use D, it offers the same ease of use as Python. I think people are sometimes a bit scared to leave the comfort and security of the well-trodden path that languages like Python and Java seem to offer.

I think we need to address these issues, because they are of a psychological nature and not really language issues. I'm sure that if we fixed GC and had the best implementation ever, people would find something else to complain about "D doesn't have blah, I don't like it!"

That's basically what my post was all about.

On 7/13/14, 9:42 AM, Dicebot wrote:
> On Sunday, 13 July 2014 at 16:32:15 UTC, Brian Rogoff wrote:
>> On Sunday, 13 July 2014 at 12:21:13 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>>> Yeah, there are many features that could have been implemented as
>>> macros instead of in the language, if D had had them from the beginning.
>>
>> What's the status of that DIP?
>
> It exists, pretty much all. No proof of concept implementation and no
> official approval so far. Community discussion was not really active
> either - most likely because it does not seem very realistic to expect
> it implemented.
>
>> What's the process by which something like that would even get added
>> to D?
>
> Usually it comes to providing DMD pull request that implements the DIP
> and than convincing Walter/Andrei it is worth merging. Most likely
> change will still be rejected but without PR chances are close zero.

I'm not sure about that.

The main problem with most of the current DIPs is quality. There seems to be an implied expectation that once a DIP follows the format guidelines and has reasonable content, it's implied that it should receive some sort of official review.

We don't have the resources to do that. What can be expected is that a DIP should be worked at for a while by its champion(s) along with the community until it's to a high standard and generally strong (preferably with a proof-of-concept implementation in tow).


Andrei

On 13 July 2014 08:21, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
> On 7/12/2014 8:03 AM, Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>>
>> My only way
>> of getting around would be train due to lack of a car, or license.
>
>
> A lack of a car would be an advantage in London. I've touristed around there a bit, and never felt the need for a car, nor would I have ever wanted to try and find a parking space.

This I find is England in general.

On Monday, 14 July 2014 at 10:13:43 UTC, Chris wrote:
> On Saturday, 12 July 2014 at 10:27:12 UTC, Russel Winder via

<snip>

>
> I think we need to address these issues, because they are of a psychological nature and not really language issues. I'm sure that if we fixed GC and had the best implementation ever, people would find something else to complain about "D doesn't have blah, I don't like it!"
>

<snip>

I'm sort of getting the idea that D goal would to be a better Java.

I'm running away from Java (after 10 years). I hope that someone at D has power and can say NO to a feature the way Linus does as opposed to adding more 'JCP' features, pushing such stuff downstream. Adding more features to be good at everything, aka a submarine that is a law mover. It's all done w/ best intentions. But forcing GC into base library of a system programing language? Maybe D is not a system programing language, but a enterprise app productivity lang. At least give us a choice, to use D why do I have to re-write the base lib.

Cheers, Vic

Am 16.07.2014 17:39, schrieb Vic:
> On Monday, 14 July 2014 at 10:13:43 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> On Saturday, 12 July 2014 at 10:27:12 UTC, Russel Winder via
>
> <snip>
>
>>
>> I think we need to address these issues, because they are of a
>> psychological nature and not really language issues. I'm sure that if
>> we fixed GC and had the best implementation ever, people would find
>> something else to complain about "D doesn't have blah, I don't like it!"
>>
>
> <snip>
>
> I'm sort of getting the idea that D goal would to be a better Java.
>
> I'm running away from Java (after 10 years). I hope that someone at D
> has power and can say NO to a feature the way Linus does as opposed to
> adding more 'JCP' features, pushing such stuff downstream. Adding more
> features to be good at everything, aka a submarine that is a law mover.
> It's all done w/ best intentions. But forcing GC into base library of a
> system programing language? Maybe D is not a system programing language,
> but a enterprise app productivity lang. At least give us a choice, to
> use D why do I have to re-write the base lib.
>
> Cheers, Vic

Yes, it has been done many times before.

Starting at Xerox PARC, those beautiful systems were many ideas of the modern web were pioneered.

Interlisp-D, Smalltalk and Mesa/Cedar, all had a mix of RC/GC.

Olivetti was playing around with Modula-3 with the SPIN OS, before Digital closed their R&D unit.

Niklaus Wirth and his colleagues created Oberon at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, which was an workable desktop OS used by a few at the informatics department and OS research topics, specially version System 3 with its gadgest toolkit. This spunned quite a few derivatives namely EthOS and AOS. Active Oberon on AOS already offered a concurrent compiler before that was a theme.

Microsoft created Singularity with Sing#. Although the project was cancelled, many of its outcomes live on WP8 native compiler and on the upcoming .NET Native.

Apple is stating that Swift is a C replacement ("Swift is a successor to the C and Objective-C languages." - https://developer.apple.com/swift/).

We just need a successful mainstream OS vendor to push a RC/GC enabled systems language to anyone targeting their OS, to finally break the stigma that GC enabled systems programming languages don't leave the research lab.

--
Paulo

On Wednesday, 16 July 2014 at 17:18:11 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
> Apple is stating that Swift is a C replacement ("Swift is a successor to the C and Objective-C languages." - https://developer.apple.com/swift/).

"Swift is an innovative new programming language for Cocoa and Cocoa Touch." and "Swift is a successor to the C and Objective-C languages. It includes low-level primitives such as types, flow control, and operators." Yes, that's low level!

Swift is Objective-C in a new dress, but not a system level programming language (and neither is Objective-C IMHO). It is an application level language for Cocoa frameworks.

Am 16.07.2014 21:26, schrieb "Ola Fosheim Grøstad" <ola.fosheim.grostad+dlang@gmail.com>":
> On Wednesday, 16 July 2014 at 17:18:11 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>> Apple is stating that Swift is a C replacement ("Swift is a successor
>> to the C and Objective-C languages." -
>> https://developer.apple.com/swift/).
>
> "Swift is an innovative new programming language for Cocoa and Cocoa
> Touch." and "Swift is a successor to the C and Objective-C languages. It
> includes low-level primitives such as types, flow control, and
> operators." Yes, that's low level!
>
> Swift is Objective-C in a new dress, but not a system level programming
> language (and neither is Objective-C IMHO). It is an application level
> language for Cocoa frameworks.

Just like ANSI C without the usual set of language extensions.

Having done system programming in Turbo Pascal and Oberon, I guess I don't seek C like features in system programming languages.

--
Paulo

On Friday, 11 July 2014 at 19:46:25 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
<snip>
>
> GC phobia is a convenient excuse for people to not use D, people who may have different actual reasons that they don't express for various reasons or may not even realize.
>

Hi Walter,

Please give us a bit more respect and benefit of the doubt and assume that we do know what we want when say something.

I want to use D! I may be forced to C++ my team because GC built into the base lib. It is possible to build a base lib w/o GC I just am in  a small company and can't afford to do that.

Cheers,
Vic

"Vic"  wrote in message news:xblbppsybigjgrtgifll@forum.dlang.org...

> Hi Walter,
>
> Please give us a bit more respect and benefit of the doubt and assume that we do know what we want when say something.
>
> I want to use D! I may be forced to C++ my team because GC built into the base lib. It is possible to build a base lib w/o GC I just am in  a small company and can't afford to do that.
>
> Cheers,
> Vic

Walter is just one guy, what makes you think he can afford to re-write the standard library for you? 

On 12 Jul 2014 16:03, "Iain Buclaw" <ibuclaw@gdcproject.org> wrote:
>
> On 12 July 2014 15:53, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, 2014-07-12 at 15:37 +0100, Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d wrote: […]
> >> I live literally 400 yards away from the burnt down west pier.  Its a beautiful sight in the morning, come sun, rain, or fog.  I hear they are building a 100 metre high elevator-to-nowhere in its place.  Sad times...
> >
> > We lived for a while in Little Western Street. Even then the West Pier was crumbling and was closed a short while after we wandered up and down it one afternoon in glorious (very un-English) sun.
> >
> > […]
> >>
> >> I can give you my details, and can see where things go from there.
> >
> > Is evening meetings in London something you might be up for?
> >
> > Depending on who is involved and what constitutes the "centre of mass", there is always the option of meeting in a pub in Clapham Junction – saves the extra haul across Central London.
> >
>
> That sounds like at least the beginnings of a plan to me.  My only way of getting around would be train due to lack of a car, or license.

Hey Russel,

Have you got anywhere with planning this?  I'd be happy to help out with anything.

Iain.