So I find out jonathan Blow is devloping his own programming language, because "C++ is wild mess". I know pretty much nothing about game dev and I was wondering if D could be used in the way Jonathan Blow would like to? Anyone experienced on game dev stuff could answer this? as far I know, the jai's compiler is not ready yet.Maybe let him know about D language, assuming it fits its game needs, would be interesting?

On Wednesday, 18 November 2020 at 16:13:20 UTC, Jack wrote:
> So I find out jonathan Blow is devloping his own programming language, because "C++ is wild mess". I know pretty much nothing about game dev and I was wondering if D could be used in the way Jonathan Blow would like to? Anyone experienced on game dev stuff could answer this? as far I know, the jai's compiler is not ready yet.Maybe let him know about D language, assuming it fits its game needs, would be interesting?

He knows... So, nope.

On Wednesday, 18 November 2020 at 16:13:20 UTC, Jack wrote:
> So I find out jonathan Blow is devloping his own programming language, because "C++ is wild mess". I know pretty much nothing about game dev and I was wondering if D could be used in the way Jonathan Blow would like to? Anyone experienced on game dev stuff could answer this? as far I know, the jai's compiler is not ready yet.Maybe let him know about D language, assuming it fits its game needs, would be interesting?

My guess is that no language is going to be more appealing to Jonathan Blow himself than the one he designed personally to fit his own needs.

On the other hand, it's entirely possible that others who are interested in Jai might find D an appealing alternative, especially given that Jai has yet to see a single public release.

On Wednesday, 18 November 2020 at 16:19:02 UTC, Paul Backus wrote:
> On Wednesday, 18 November 2020 at 16:13:20 UTC, Jack wrote:
>> [...]
>
> My guess is that no language is going to be more appealing to Jonathan Blow himself than the one he designed personally to fit his own needs.
>
> On the other hand, it's entirely possible that others who are interested in Jai might find D an appealing alternative, especially given that Jai has yet to see a single public release.

IIRC Jai doesn't even have RAII so it's probably not even similar to D philosophically.

On Thu, Nov 19, 2020 at 2:15 AM Jack via Digitalmars-d < digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:

> So I find out jonathan Blow is devloping his own programming language, because "C++ is wild mess". I know pretty much nothing about game dev and I was wondering if D could be used in the way Jonathan Blow would like to? Anyone experienced on game dev stuff could answer this? as far I know, the jai's compiler is not ready yet.Maybe let him know about D language, assuming it fits its game needs, would be interesting?
>

I argued about this with him briefly before he started writing jai. He
knows about D, although he has no experience at all.
Jon is not interested in D (or any existing language); his vision includes
things that are omitted from D by-design, like AST macros and a
full-featured JIT/execution engine (including binary linkage), and I think
Jonathan sees jai more as a comprehensive solution (which solves the whole
build pipeline) rather than 'just a compiler' which takes a text file and
emits an object file.
There are distinctly different goals.

On Thu, Nov 19, 2020 at 2:24 AM Manu <turkeyman@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 19, 2020 at 2:15 AM Jack via Digitalmars-d < digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
>
>> So I find out jonathan Blow is devloping his own programming language, because "C++ is wild mess". I know pretty much nothing about game dev and I was wondering if D could be used in the way Jonathan Blow would like to? Anyone experienced on game dev stuff could answer this? as far I know, the jai's compiler is not ready yet.Maybe let him know about D language, assuming it fits its game needs, would be interesting?
>>
>
> I argued about this with him briefly before he started writing jai. He
> knows about D, although he has no experience at all.
> Jon is not interested in D (or any existing language); his vision includes
> things that are omitted from D by-design, like AST macros and a
> full-featured JIT/execution engine (including binary linkage), and I think
> Jonathan sees jai more as a comprehensive solution (which solves the whole
> build pipeline) rather than 'just a compiler' which takes a text file and
> emits an object file.
> There are distinctly different goals.
>

Also funny timing; at this _exact_ moment, I just received an email from his company's recruiter :P .. extremely spooky coincidence!

On Wednesday, 18 November 2020 at 16:13:20 UTC, Jack wrote:
> So I find out jonathan Blow is devloping his own programming language, because "C++ is wild mess". I know pretty much nothing about game dev and I was wondering if D could be used in the way Jonathan Blow would like to? Anyone experienced on game dev stuff could answer this? as far I know, the jai's compiler is not ready yet.Maybe let him know about D language, assuming it fits its game needs, would be interesting?

It's funny, there seem to be a lot of gamedev people that *know* about D, but aren't interested in using it for various reasons (I think the primary one is probably that most/all modern game engines are written in C++ - except Unity, which is still C++ under the hood - and the toolchains are usually geared toward C++ as well).

John Carmack mentioned its support for functional purity in an article back in 2012:
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/169296/Indepth_Functional_programming_in_C.php

And Jonathan Blow has mentioned it at least in passing before, not to mention one of Ubisoft's development studios evaluating it (which I don't think panned out), and D code actually shipping in a modern AAA game (Alan Wake from Remedy Entertainment).

Manu and Ethan are the ones that are/were down in the trenches actually using D for gamedev, but it seems to me like the language is very well suited to it; potentially moreso than C++. C++ has almost completely dominated that space for 20+ years, though, so I don't think D will get big there anytime soon.

On Wednesday, 18 November 2020 at 16:13:20 UTC, Jack wrote:
> So I find out jonathan Blow is devloping his own programming language, because "C++ is wild mess". I know pretty much nothing about game dev and I was wondering if D could be used in the way Jonathan Blow would like to? Anyone experienced on game dev stuff could answer this? as far I know, the jai's compiler is not ready yet.Maybe let him know about D language, assuming it fits its game needs, would be interesting?

I wrote an email after the first Jai video to to try D but Jon Blow just said:
"D is fine but it's not exactly what I'm looking for".

Blow seems to think there is a lot of native design space with plenty of things that would make a way better language than D.

He then went on to repeat many mistakes successfully avoided by D:
- new syntax
- lack of exceptions
- AST macros
- the SoA and AoS features can be replicated with one D template
- imperative build system
- unsafe CTFE
- "Jai will not have subtype polymorphism", let that sink in
...


Just a reminder than Blow is a bit extreme, he goes all in financially and almost went bankrupted for both Braid and the Witness.

On Wednesday, 18 November 2020 at 16:13:20 UTC, Jack wrote:
> So I find out jonathan Blow is devloping his own programming language, because "C++ is wild mess". I know pretty much nothing about game dev and I was wondering if D could be used in the way Jonathan Blow would like to? Anyone experienced on game dev stuff could answer this? as far I know, the jai's compiler is not ready yet.Maybe let him know about D language, assuming it fits its game needs, would be interesting?

I'd say jai provides gamedev-friendly tradeoffs, like trading correctness for agility, performance and features, which isn't good for other kinds of software.

On Wednesday, 18 November 2020 at 17:23:17 UTC, Guillaume Piolat wrote:
> On Wednesday, 18 November 2020 at 16:13:20 UTC, Jack wrote:
>> So I find out jonathan Blow is devloping his own programming language, because "C++ is wild mess". I know pretty much nothing about game dev and I was wondering if D could be used in the way Jonathan Blow would like to? Anyone experienced on game dev stuff could answer this? as far I know, the jai's compiler is not ready yet.Maybe let him know about D language, assuming it fits its game needs, would be interesting?
>
> I wrote an email after the first Jai video to to try D but Jon Blow just said:
> "D is fine but it's not exactly what I'm looking for".
>
> Blow seems to think there is a lot of native design space with plenty of things that would make a way better language than D.
>
> He then went on to repeat many mistakes successfully avoided by D:
> - new syntax
> - lack of exceptions
> - AST macros
> - the SoA and AoS features can be replicated with one D template
> - imperative build system
> - unsafe CTFE
> - "Jai will not have subtype polymorphism", let that sink in
> ...
>
>
> Just a reminder than Blow is a bit extreme, he goes all in financially and almost went bankrupted for both Braid and the Witness.

I don't think that those are mistakes if implemented properly.
Implementation quality is key.

Jai is already much faster than dmd is because it has a proper task and dependency system.
(Like SDC but more sophisticated.)

Personally I want to move dmd in a similar direction, but with the sprawling un-documented dependencies it's almost impossible to do.