On 19 February 2014 18:12, Bruno Medeiros <brunodomedeiros+dng@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 19/02/2014 16:03, Daniel Murphy wrote:
>>
>> "Bruno Medeiros"  wrote in message news:le2i5p$28g5$1@digitalmars.com...
>>
>>> [snip]
>>
>>
>> I know that a lot of work needs to be done before the frontend is ready to be efficiently used as a library, but that doesn't make it impossible.
>>
>>> But anyways, those are secondary points actually. What I think is really crucial, is that we don't have a main-stream compiler in D. When DMD gets ported to D, and the main development of DMD happens there, in the D version, then I'll believe a reasonable compiler-as-library could happen.
>>
>>
>> I think you may have missed something!  This is coming in the near future.
>>
>>
>> I have been working on automatically converting the DMD fronted to D since dconf (and before).  I've produced working compilers on win32, linux32, and linux64, with the other platforms currently lacking only because I don't have a box set up for them.
>>
>> The only outstanding work for dmd is fixing layout and commenting/formatting issues in the generated source, which I am slowly getting through.
>>
>> I expect any issues encountered with the other platforms to be minor, and hopefully switching gdc and ldc will be fairly painless too.
>>
>> I'm hoping 2.066 will be the first D-based dmd release and work on the C++ source will cease immediately after that.
>
>
> I'm glad to hear that, that sounds very promising. Especially since dogfooding the compiler has great importance that goes beyond just the compiler-as-a-library goal.
>
> I think DMD will get there eventually, but... you think it will come as soon as the DMD 2.066 release already?? As in, the official DMD, not a fork. Walter and Andrei have said they are on board with that?
>
> Also, Ian raises a good point, what will happen to GDC and LDC once that switch happens? They are both very important projects to be left hanging in the rain.

Someone can feel free to go through all Visitor-related pulls and merge them down to GDC ahead of merging the next release itself.  That alone would relieve 90% of the god awful pain the next two releases will bring - not that any of the 2.060 series releases were any pleasant.

Regards
Iain.

"Iain Buclaw"  wrote in message news:mailman.190.1392830556.6445.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com...

> Once you get past the 6 months spent re-writing 70% of the existing
> gdc and ldc glue code. ;)

As the person who re-wrote the dmd glue code, I can assure you it's not really that bad.  Worst case, you could even defer those updates by adding the virtual functions back into the ast classes. 

"Bruno Medeiros"  wrote in message news:le2s5q$2i0u$1@digitalmars.com...

> I think DMD will get there eventually, but... you think it will come as soon as the DMD 2.066 release already?? As in, the official DMD, not a fork. Walter and Andrei have said they are on board with that?

The exact details of the switch need to be worked out, but Walter and Andrei are on board.  We're looking at at least a couple of months until the next release, which should be plenty of time to finalize this.  No guarantees of course, we all still have to agree on a way to do it.

> Also, Ian raises a good point, what will happen to GDC and LDC once that switch happens? They are both very important projects to be left hanging in the rain.

The switch will only happen once all three compilers are ready.  Automatic conversion will let us test and release official D versions of DMD in parallel without the sources getting out of sync. 

"Iain Buclaw"  wrote in message news:mailman.195.1392842840.6445.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com...

> Someone can feel free to go through all Visitor-related pulls and
> merge them down to GDC ahead of merging the next release itself.  That
> alone would relieve 90% of the god awful pain the next two releases
> will bring - not that any of the 2.060 series releases were any
> pleasant.

This will be my focus after DDMD is finished. 

On 20 February 2014 03:13, Daniel Murphy <yebbliesnospam@gmail.com> wrote:
> "Iain Buclaw"  wrote in message news:mailman.195.1392842840.6445.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com...
>
>
>> Someone can feel free to go through all Visitor-related pulls and merge them down to GDC ahead of merging the next release itself.  That alone would relieve 90% of the god awful pain the next two releases will bring - not that any of the 2.060 series releases were any pleasant.
>
>
> This will be my focus after DDMD is finished.

If that is an offer to raise pulls to GDC for all your changes, I humbling accept anything.  Though I hope you don't mind if I insist on GCC coding conventions. :o)

http://gcc.gnu.org/codingconventions.html#Cxx_Conventions

On Thursday, 20 February 2014 at 03:11:17 UTC, Daniel Murphy wrote:
> "Bruno Medeiros"  wrote in message news:le2s5q$2i0u$1@digitalmars.com...
>
>> I think DMD will get there eventually, but... you think it will come as soon as the DMD 2.066 release already?? As in, the official DMD, not a fork. Walter and Andrei have said they are on board with that?
>
> The exact details of the switch need to be worked out, but Walter and Andrei are on board.  We're looking at at least a couple of months until the next release, which should be plenty of time to finalize this.  No guarantees of course, we all still have to agree on a way to do it.
>
>> Also, Ian raises a good point, what will happen to GDC and LDC once that switch happens? They are both very important projects to be left hanging in the rain.
>
> The switch will only happen once all three compilers are ready.
>  Automatic conversion will let us test and release official D versions of DMD in parallel without the sources getting out of sync.

Congratulations on the work achieved thus far. :)

"Iain Buclaw"  wrote in message news:mailman.196.1392884595.6445.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com...

> > This will be my focus after DDMD is finished.
>
> If that is an offer to raise pulls to GDC for all your changes, I
> humbling accept anything.  Though I hope you don't mind if I insist on
> GCC coding conventions. :o)

We can't switch until gdc and ldc are ready, so I assume me working on merging the visitor stuff to gdc/ldc will help speed things along.

> http://gcc.gnu.org/codingconventions.html#Cxx_Conventions

Fun fun. 

On Tuesday, 18 February 2014 at 06:39:51 UTC, Marco Leise wrote:
> Am Mon, 10 Feb 2014 18:11:37 +0000
> schrieb "Steve Teale" <steve.teale@britseyeview.com>:
>
>> What can be done to capture the attention of young people in the developing world?
>> 
>> Probably the most effective thing would be if it were possible to edit, compile, and run D programs on a cheap Android ARM phone.
>> 
>> Is this within the bounds of possibility?
>> 
>> There are millions of unemployed, bored, restless, and ambitious young men out there, who have saved their all to buy a cheap smartphone.
>> 
>> Any other ideas?
>> 
>> Steve
>
> How did you get started?
>
> My first language had these properties:
>
> - it was pre-installed on my PC
> - it was powering a game I played
> - it was dead simple with good error detection
> - I/O, audio, graphics was part of the language
>
> It was QBasic on MS-DOS. Later with Windows 3.1 I switched to
> Delphi. The feature set and my usage patterns grew:
>
> - the basic DOS graphics got replaced with window backdrops
>   and "bitmap buttons", sound was provided with
>   SndPlaySound("some.wav").
> - The internet became a new I/O source and I queried a forum
>   for new posts, a server for new Counter-Strike maps etc.
>
> During this transition me and a friend from school tried stuff
> for fun, like exchanging disks with encoded messages that
> could be opened with our "secret network" software, for which
> we split up the work. The motivation was still much about
> making it look and sound cool and surpassing each other with
> fancy ideas and proving that they could be implemented.
>
> I only came to D after I switched to Linux and dropped Delphi.
> By that time I wrote server code in Delphi and Java
> professionally and fancy graphics was no longer a priority.
>
> I don't think D fills the QBasic niche quite so well and to be
> in the Delphi spot requires a much more ready to use
> environment with everything included. And by that I mean
> VisualBasic/C#/Delphi like IDE with accessible help, GUI
> builder, graphics and sound. (Which is much easier if your
> only target is Win32 :p)

Is there any good data on how programmers started out?

My experience was very different: I bought K&R, read it cover to cover while trying out the examples, then tried to write a math library, only tools involved: gedit and gcc.