Hi

It seems to me that a number of other new programming languages are basically an attempt to mimic D without the GC. I am thinking of 'Jai' by Jonathan Blow, 'Zig' by Andrew Kelly.

I was wondering if it worthwhile branding -betterC differently - e.g. use a brand such as 'micro-D' or some nicer name. That is, give it a new identity that highlights that it not just better C  - but a D version without GC.

Regards
Dibyendu

On Thursday, 29 October 2020 at 11:50:12 UTC, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:
> Hi
>
> It seems to me that a number of other new programming languages are basically an attempt to mimic D without the GC. I am thinking of 'Jai' by Jonathan Blow, 'Zig' by Andrew Kelly.
>
> I was wondering if it worthwhile branding -betterC differently - e.g. use a brand such as 'micro-D' or some nicer name. That is, give it a new identity that highlights that it not just better C  - but a D version without GC.
>
> Regards
> Dibyendu

D-lite

On Thursday, 29 October 2020 at 11:50:12 UTC, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:
> Hi
>
> It seems to me that a number of other new programming languages are basically an attempt to mimic D without the GC. I am thinking of 'Jai' by Jonathan Blow, 'Zig' by Andrew Kelly.
>
> I was wondering if it worthwhile branding -betterC differently - e.g. use a brand such as 'micro-D' or some nicer name. That is, give it a new identity that highlights that it not just better C  - but a D version without GC.
>
> Regards
> Dibyendu

I rather rebrand D because it is difficult to search for D related stuff in search engines. D is de facto "dlang" because you cannot search for "D".

I was thinking if D is going to rename itself to "Duck", since it is common to use duck typing in D programming. However, searching for ducks on the internet will lead to that you really get results about ducks, the bird so you need to use ducklang just you need to use dlang.

There are two names for what you are suggesting.

Runtime less D and pay-as-you-go.

These are being worked on over time. They are basically the same thing, use as much of druntime as you want (i.e. some, or none).

-betterC fills its role, and doesn't need rebranding.

On Thursday, 29 October 2020 at 11:50:12 UTC, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:
> Hi
>
> It seems to me that a number of other new programming languages are basically an attempt to mimic D without the GC. I am thinking of 'Jai' by Jonathan Blow, 'Zig' by Andrew Kelly.
>
> I was wondering if it worthwhile branding -betterC differently - e.g. use a brand such as 'micro-D' or some nicer name. That is, give it a new identity that highlights that it not just better C  - but a D version without GC.
>
> Regards
> Dibyendu

I'm pretty sure that Jai is not mimicking D, also I doubt that Zig is either.

On Thursday, 29 October 2020 at 11:58:41 UTC, IGotD- wrote:
> I rather rebrand D because it is difficult to search for D related stuff in search engines. D is de facto "dlang" because you cannot search for "D".

This used to be more true than it is today. Certainly only searching for "D" will give you wrong results because of the overwhelming ambiguity, but so will "C" (tested Google).

"d standard library", "d tutorials", "d syntax", "d std algorithm", "d hello world" etc all give correct/relevant results. Narurally you can find examples where they don't, like "d string", but my point stands.

Branding is fine, adoption is hard.

On Thursday, 29 October 2020 at 11:58:41 UTC, IGotD- wrote:
> I rather rebrand D because it is difficult to search for D related stuff in search engines. D is de facto "dlang" because you cannot search for "D".

But then you type "dlang" and search engine suggests "golang".

On Thursday, 29 October 2020 at 11:52:03 UTC, jmh530 wrote:
> ...
> D-lite

This is indeed nice and it's sounds like delight.

But I would go without "-", just: "Dlite".

Now a name that I think it's a bit weird when I heard is: "DasBetterC". For me this sounds more like a Germany company than a feature of a language.

Finally a name that I really don't like is the library: "Phobos". I still prefer the old "Tango" a thousand of times.

Matheus.

On Thursday, 29 October 2020 at 13:49:01 UTC, matheus wrote:
>
> Now a name that I think it's a bit weird when I heard is: "DasBetterC". For me this sounds more like a Germany company than a feature of a language.
>

DasBetterC sounds horrible but I understand it is like a running joke in the D community. Not sure how it all started.

On Thursday, 29 October 2020 at 14:15:46 UTC, IGotD- wrote:

> DasBetterC sounds horrible but I understand it is like a running joke in the D community. Not sure how it all started.

DConf 2018 in Germany. Walter's keynote was titled, "D as Better C". The DasBetterC thing hit him as he was looking at the title slide.

On Thursday, 29 October 2020 at 11:50:12 UTC, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:

>
> I was wondering if it worthwhile branding -betterC differently - e.g. use a brand such as 'micro-D' or some nicer name. That is, give it a new identity that highlights that it not just better C  - but a D version without GC.

I think it's a bad, bad, bad idea to put any emphasis on BetterC other than as a tool to help in porting C or C++ code to D, or to integrate D into existing C and C++ projects. I see too many people reaching for it first thing, probably out of a misguided GC phobia. D is the language we need to be promoting. BetterC was intended for a specific purpose. Beyond that, it's a crippled D. If some people prefer to use it that way, fine, but we shouldn't encourage it.