"Bruno Medeiros"  wrote in message news:ldfpa7$27s3$1@digitalmars.com...

> There is not a chance in hell DMD would sucessfully be adapted for these purposes. Maybe as fork, but not as the main stream. Even as a fork I hardly see it happening (The Descent IDE went with this route but it the semantic engine was buggy and quickly became very hard to maintain.) The reasons are manyfold and I'm not going into detail, but suffice to say a semantic engine for an IDE needs to be prepared to run in an interactive/deamon mode to have a decent performance, not in batch (run once) mode like a compiler. This adds several constraints and requirements to the semantic engine architecture, something that DMD is not prepared to. It would take a large engineering effort to adapt it to that, and crucially, Walter would have to be involved, but he has his hands full already.

I disagree, this is 'the plan'.  Please, go into detail, I would love to find out about any roadblocks I've overlooked now rather than later. 

On Wednesday, 12 February 2014 at 01:48:24 UTC, Manu wrote:
> The other major hurdle is a proper parser usable for tooling. Many are
> trying to reinvent the wheel, and nothing short of the DMD front-end itself
> is really capable of properly parsing D code.
> The biggest missing component I'm aware of is this
> DMD-frontend-as-a-library idea that is always being discussed, but never
> seems to be happening. If I had to nominate a single critical goal for the
> ecosystem for 2014, that would be it.

To be precise, it's not the parsing that is the issue. Creating a fully compliant (with many updates to the spec needed along the way) and robust parser is not particularly hard and is happening with stuff like SDC, and more recently, DScanner.

It is the semantic analysis that needs a *proper* engine such as that of a compiler, in which case DMD's front-end and SDC are the only real options, not the best-effort, good-enough crap is currently used by IDEs.

The best we can manage with the current approach is something close to what Visual Studio has for C++, but not quite even at that level (because D's generic additions and CTFE mix things up further), and even then it would be years away in terms of development time.

Am 12.02.2014 05:43, schrieb Jeremy DeHaan:
> On Wednesday, 12 February 2014 at 04:42:47 UTC, Jeremy DeHaan
> wrote:
>> On Monday, 10 February 2014 at 18:14:26 UTC, Dejan Lekic wrote:
>>> On Monday, 10 February 2014 at 18:11:38 UTC, Steve Teale wrote:
>>>> What can be done to capture the attention of young people in the
>>>> developing world?
>>>>
>>>> Probably the most effective thing would be if it were possible to
>>>> edit, compile, and run D programs on a cheap Android ARM phone.
>>>>
>>>> Is this within the bounds of possibility?
>>>>
>>>> There are millions of unemployed, bored, restless, and ambitious
>>>> young men out there, who have saved their all to buy a cheap
>>>> smartphone.
>>>>
>>>> Any other ideas?
>>>>
>>>> Steve
>>>
>>> A D compiler that targets JVM or Dalvik directly is my personal dream...
>>
>> That's kind of what I was going for when I was working on my
>> transcompiler a while back. Something that goes directly from d
>> source to Dalcik would be so amazing though...
>
> err..Dalvik

Dalvik was replaced by ART for new Android versions

On 2/12/2014 11:26 AM, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>
> Dalvik was replaced by ART for new Android versions

I thought ART was still just included secondary thing that developers *can* use, but mainly just as a developer preview, and that Dalvik was still the default.

On Thursday, 13 February 2014 at 14:03:43 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On 2/12/2014 11:26 AM, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>>
>> Dalvik was replaced by ART for new Android versions
>
> I thought ART was still just included secondary thing that developers *can* use, but mainly just as a developer preview, and that Dalvik was still the default.

In the commercial versions you are correct.

However, Dalvik has been replaced already for whatever might be the future Android release.

https://android.googlesource.com/platform%2Fbuild/+/08d410f53249c18d752f56a881ed2335403080d4

--
Paulo

Probably noting to do with D, but if D were to get into the appropriate place firs , then ...

On Wednesday, 12 February 2014 at 02:43:36 UTC, Tofu Ninja wrote:
>> Steve
> Oh I am sorry, by developing world I thought you were talking about the world of developers, why are you interested in getting D to the developing world? Seems kinda odd...

Because if we can't get those young men into something with intellectual content, we're going to be back in the dark ages before we know it.

I just happen to think D is a great language!

On Thursday, 13 February 2014 at 15:58:44 UTC, Steve Teale wrote:

> I just happen to think D is a great language!

Thats not even up for debate, D IS GREAT! The problem is just convincing the rest of the world that it is, but thus is the task of the lucky few who have seen the light.

Jokes aside, I don't think making it possible to write D on a smartphone would help get D(or any language for that matter) into the hands of kids in the developing world. Today you can by a laptop now for the same price of a midrange smartphone with much more power. Though the smartphone has the advantage of the internet which is essentially required to do anything programing wise but it is certainly possible get the internet elsewhere. Although if we are talking about a developing country then I suppose they might not have the infrastructure to support landline.

In reality I think there are many other more difficult barriers to learning to program in a developing country. For one it is basically required to know english to become a proficient programer(almost all documentation is written in english). It requires ample amounts of free time and regular access to a computer with an internet connection, I don't think a smart phone would cut it. Also I think the cultivation "intellectual" skills require an environment that allows you to not have to worry about basic needs and just focus on developing the skill.

For learning to program, I almost feel like getting a sandbox set up on the web would be better. The MIT project Scratch, for example, is fantastic for teaching programming. Unless you're talking about teaching in locations without internet connectivity, which is an entirely different problem.

On Thursday, 13 February 2014 at 16:40:12 UTC, Tofu Ninja wrote:
> On Thursday, 13 February 2014 at 15:58:44 UTC, Steve Teale wrote:
>
>> I just happen to think D is a great language!
>
> Thats not even up for debate, D IS GREAT! The problem is just convincing the rest of the world that it is, but thus is the task of the lucky few who have seen the light.
>
> Jokes aside, I don't think making it possible to write D on a smartphone would help get D(or any language for that matter) into the hands of kids in the developing world. Today you can by a laptop now for the same price of a midrange smartphone with much more power. Though the smartphone has the advantage of the internet which is essentially required to do anything programing wise but it is certainly possible get the internet elsewhere. Although if we are talking about a developing country then I suppose they might not have the infrastructure to support landline.
>
> In reality I think there are many other more difficult barriers to learning to program in a developing country. For one it is basically required to know english to become a proficient programer(almost all documentation is written in english). It requires ample amounts of free time and regular access to a computer with an internet connection, I don't think a smart phone would cut it. Also I think the cultivation "intellectual" skills require an environment that allows you to not have to worry about basic needs and just focus on developing the skill.

wouldn't*
wouldn't help get D into the hands of kids

small typo that kinda changes what I was trying to say...