On 05/29/2017 06:25 AM, aberba wrote:
> On Sunday, 28 May 2017 at 18:38:21 UTC, Moritz Maxeiner wrote:
>> On Sunday, 28 May 2017 at 17:34:30 UTC, Nerve wrote:
> 
>> With regards to your popularity argument: IMHO the only people we should concern ourselves with are those that evaluate which are the right tools for their current task as objectively as feasible given their respective circumstances, not those that are swayed by whatever is the current hype on social site XYZ. But that's just me.
> 
> True.  Its the current pollution in the software dev community. Baffles me. I'm glad the OP brought this forward.

+1(billion)

On Sunday, 28 May 2017 at 18:50:02 UTC, Nerve wrote:
> On Sunday, 28 May 2017 at 18:38:21 UTC, Moritz Maxeiner wrote:
>> All in all, I see little to no benefit to what you propose, while requiring significant work on the language spec.
>
> Point taken. My only remaining reservation then is the communication problem D has with the wider prospective programming world in conveying that the GC has alternatives that work.

I agree.

Currently, a good answer is to direct people to the "Don't fear the reaper" [0] article, but I feel it does not really address all concerns of people. Concerns like:

* How much of Phobos does not work with @nogc? A good answer would probably be case studies of larger programs/companies. Does Weka use @nogc a lot?
* How to work around the GC? The reaper article does not mention RefCounted.
* Limitations of @nogc? It does not prevent *another* thread to call the GC, which might then stop the world. We have to mention the trick to create threads which are not tracked by GC.
* How good is the D GC? Will it improve in the foreseeable future? Information about the performance of the current GC is quite dated, although I guess not much has changed.

Also, p0nce has some more GC tricks: https://p0nce.github.io/d-idioms/

[0] https://dlang.org/blog/2017/03/20/dont-fear-the-reaper/

On Tuesday, 30 May 2017 at 10:30:13 UTC, qznc wrote:

> Currently, a good answer is to direct people to the "Don't fear the reaper" [0] article, but I feel it does not really address all concerns of people. Concerns like:

That was the introductory post in what I hope will be a long series where many of those concerns *will* be addressed, though I don't have the breadth of knowledge to write them all. My next one is going to cover the basics of @nogc (looking like next week). I hope to have a few guest posters contributing to the series on topics I'm not well-versed in.

>
> * How much of Phobos does not work with @nogc? A good answer would probably be case studies of larger programs/companies. Does Weka use @nogc a lot?

Been reading my TODO list? I have a shortlist of people I plan to ask about a Phobos @nogc post. And I'm planning a series of company profiles where that sort of thing will probably be discussed. I had one company lined up to start before DConf, but it never panned out. But during DConf and since I've gotten some tentative commitments. I intend to kick that off in July.

> * How to work around the GC? The reaper article does not mention RefCounted.

A future post will. I expect to have a few posts related to more specialized strategies (Atila's post on automem is in that vein). Currently, I'm planning a post about something I call "Terminator" (which is essentially RefCounted, but calling a `terminate` method rather than the destructor) to introduce the concept, and will talk about RefCounted there. But that's going to come after a post about how the GC interacts with destructors, and that will come after my @nogc post.

> * Limitations of @nogc? It does not prevent *another* thread to call the GC, which might then stop the world. We have to mention the trick to create threads which are not tracked by GC.
> * How good is the D GC? Will it improve in the foreseeable future? Information about the performance of the current GC is quite dated, although I guess not much has changed.

The GC implementation is another thing I hope to have a post about, but it will again require a guest author to write it.


> [0] https://dlang.org/blog/2017/03/20/dont-fear-the-reaper/