On 1/10/2024 4:23 AM, Martyn wrote:
> I am surprised there was a massive backlash towards UDAs.

I was, too.

On 1/12/2024 12:45 AM, Paolo Invernizzi wrote:
> There's also the plus that D is really a productive language, hey, I remember the discussion about the opportunity to convert D codebase from C++ to D: "that will turn the compiler into something extremely manageable, that will be D unfair advance over other languages!"

I'm very happy it's now 100% D code, it's much more pleasant to maintain it in D.

The codebase still retains a "C with Classes" style to it, one I am gradually bending it away from into a more D-ish style.

On 1/11/2024 9:40 AM, a11e99z wrote:
> 2) allow fat pointers for GC-refs and class' userdata-field.
> let people enjoy to invent something useful or just integrate GoGC or Nim'ORC.

Microsoft did this with their "Managed C++" project. C++ had two fundamental pointer types, one for GC memory and the other for non-managed memory.

I'm told it is still around, but it never caught on.

I expect it had similar issues that DOS C compilers had. They had 3 pointer types - near pointers, far pointers, and huge pointers (and sometimes stack pointers and code pointers, too!). That often meant a function had to have multiple versions, one for each pointer type.

It was wonderful to get away from that and have only one pointer type to deal with.

On Sunday, 14 January 2024 at 08:28:00 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 1/11/2024 9:40 AM, a11e99z wrote:
>> 2) allow fat pointers for GC-refs and class' userdata-field.
>> let people enjoy to invent something useful or just integrate GoGC or Nim'ORC.
>
> Microsoft did this with their "Managed C++" project. C++ had two fundamental pointer types, one for GC memory and the other for non-managed memory.
>
> I'm told it is still around, but it never caught on.
>
>....


It caught on where it mattered, .NET interop with native libraries.

Just got updated to C++20 last year.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/cpp20-support-comes-to-cpp-cli/

Then there is Unreal C++, with its GC support for Blueprint visual scripting.

Any game written in Unreal, using Blueprint makes use of it.

On Sunday, 14 January 2024 at 11:34:19 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>
> Then there is Unreal C++, with its GC support for Blueprint visual scripting.
>
> Any game written in Unreal, using Blueprint makes use of it.

Great, but in Unreal it is just plain pointers and it is the UPROPERTY that makes it work, IIRC all it does just adds and deletes GC roots for said pointers on object spawning/deleting.

If you forgot to add UPROPERTY you will be quickly reminded as it will get released way too soon.

On 1/14/2024 3:34 AM, Paulo Pinto wrote:
> It caught on where it mattered, .NET interop with native libraries.

It caught on in DOS programming, too, because there was no other way. Nobody liked it, though. It remained ugly with duplicative code.

Needing both a "far" strlen and a "near" strlen just stunk. It was constant cognitive load - should this pointer be a far one or a near one?

On 1/16/2024 12:49 PM, Les De Ridder wrote:
> Good luck to both projects. I wonder what my go-to compiled language
> will be in a couple years.

Steel only gets tempered with fire and hammer :-)