I was directed here form comp.lang.c++ while asking about the future of c++. What is the future of D? Where is it going? Is this likely to be The Next Big thing? I had not heart much about D until recently, so don't really know how big it is or is likely to be.

Ook wrote:
> I was directed here form comp.lang.c++ while asking about the future of c++. What is the future of D? Where is it going? Is this likely to be The Next Big thing? I had not heart much about D until recently, so don't really know how big it is or is likely to be.
> 
> 
> 
As big as Walter and the community manages to make it... only time will tell.

Ook wrote:
> I was directed here form comp.lang.c++ while asking about the future of c++.
> What is the future of D? Where is it going? Is this likely to be The Next
> Big thing? I had not heart much about D until recently, so don't really know
> how big it is or is likely to be.
> 

I've been following things since late 2004 and it seems to me to have been gaining momentum ever since, but especially over the last couple of months. There seems to have been a lot of activity and "new faces" (new posters to this NG) recently.

For what they're worth:

http://www.tiobe.com/
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/debian/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=all

http://dsource.org/ is in the early stages of a cosmetic redesign from what I gather, but that is sort-of the place to find libraries and such.

Give D a try!

Ook wrote:
> I was directed here form comp.lang.c++ while asking about the future of c++.
> What is the future of D? Where is it going? Is this likely to be The Next
> Big thing? I had not heart much about D until recently, so don't really know
> how big it is or is likely to be.
> 
> 
> 

Its an exciting time around here recently. As posted before, we recently ascended to the #19th spot on the tiobe survey. Also, the compiler is becoming more feature complete and stable with each new release, which have been coming quite regularly, about once or twice a month.

One link I think that hasn't been posted is, http://dstress.kuehne.cn. Which is a stress test suite for the D compiler(s). If you look at the trends, the compiler has been getting more and more conformant/stable.

-- 
Kyle Furlong // Physics Undergrad, UCSB

"D is going wherever the D community wants it to go." - Walter Bright

if just D becomes official part of GCC asap... and gets official GDB support as well as better documentation a real multiplatform GUI lib and of course a good IDE... it will make it so much easier for noobs... All this will contribute to a great future!

Cris wrote:

> if just D becomes official part of GCC asap...

There are two problems with this, at the moment.

1) In order to be GNU, all copyright should be FSF
   http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/

2) GDC doesn't work with the release series of GCC
   http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.1/

> and gets official GDB support...

Same goes for being an offical part of GDB, I guess.

But it is possible now to use and package a version
of GDC that uses a custom GCC/GDB of older releases,
(including using the older "system" GCC compilers)
so I don't think it is a major obstacle to using D ?

> as well as better documentation a real multiplatform
> GUI lib and of course a good IDE... 

No argument about the need for Doc/GUI/IDE, though...
(including better packaging of the D toolchain itself)

However, there *are* some community efforts going on.

--anders

Anders F Björklund wrote:
> Cris wrote:
> 
>> if just D becomes official part of GCC asap...
> 
> There are two problems with this, at the moment.
> 
> 1) In order to be GNU, all copyright should be FSF
>    http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/
> 
> 2) GDC doesn't work with the release series of GCC
>    http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.1/
> 
>> and gets official GDB support...
> 
> Same goes for being an offical part of GDB, I guess.
> 
> But it is possible now to use and package a version
> of GDC that uses a custom GCC/GDB of older releases,
> (including using the older "system" GCC compilers)
> so I don't think it is a major obstacle to using D ?

It might be nice to eventually have a packaged version of GDC available in the Debian downloader and other such places.  I have no idea how to go about this, but I imagine it can't be terribly difficult?


Sean

Sean Kelly wrote:

> It might be nice to eventually have a packaged version of GDC available in the Debian downloader and other such places.  I have no idea how to go about this, but I imagine it can't be terribly difficult?

As far as I know, for Debian and Gentoo Linux it's mostly about getting someone to volunteer as a GDC maintainer - not so much about packaging.

But I'm using Fedora Core myself. (RPMS)

--anders

Cris wrote:
> if just D becomes official part of GCC asap... and gets official GDB support as well as better documentation a real multiplatform GUI lib and of course a good IDE... it will make it so much easier for noobs... All this will contribute to a great future!

The Dwarf3 spec does officially include D support.