On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 11:47:02 -0700, Paulo Pinto <pjmlp@progtools.org> wrote:

> Am 12.09.2013 18:45, schrieb Adam Wilson:
>> On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 09:22:18 -0700, Trent <anon@nope.avi> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thursday, 12 September 2013 at 15:55:26 UTC, deadalnix wrote:
>>>> On Thursday, 12 September 2013 at 11:30:57 UTC, PauloPinto wrote:
>>>>> I don't get the point, what there is VM like when I compile Java,
>>>>> Scala, F#, C# native code?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Compiling such language to native code require horribly convoluted
>>>> code generation. For instance, an helloworld in java compilled
>>>> natively with gcj gives you a 50Mb (!) binary blob.
>>>
>>> GCJ also doesn't offer improved performance over the JVM for
>>> non-trivial code. It will reduce the startup time, since no JIT is
>>> needed, but beyond that it doesn't really offer benefits.
>>>
>>> Not sure about other VM->native compilation
>>
>> Microsoft built the Singularity OS using a special full-native compiler
>> for C# called Sing#. Very cool piece of technology that I really wish
>> they would release to the public: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sing_Sharp
>>
>
> You mean this?
>
> http://singularity.codeplex.com/
>
> --
> Paulo

Indeed. Would be really nice to revive Sing# and make it into a first class too. To bad it's license to so restrictive as to be unusable....

-- 
Adam Wilson
IRC: LightBender
Project Coordinator
The Horizon Project
http://www.thehorizonproject.org/

On Saturday, 7 September 2013 at 19:05:03 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> Recent threads here have made it pretty clear that VisualD is a critical piece of D infrastructure. (VisualD integrated D usage into Microsoft Visual Studio.)

Allow me to support this idea, however to suggest that also add a cross-platform IDE/plug-in.

This is important for the Linux world.

Current choices are DDT, for Eclipse and Mono-D, for MonoDevelop.

I would vote for the two for the time being and see how things develop.

Official endorsement should increase their visibility, their use and, why not, patches.

In the future, they could also be integrated in the installer.

I would also suggest to move DDT on github (Mono-D is already there).

All these, of course, only if respective authors agree. I kindly ask them to provide their POV.

BTW, kudos to Alexander Bothe and Bruno Medeiros.

For the record, I am a heavy user of Eclipse/CDT on Linux, and my colleagues are almost all users of the same, albeit some of them on Windows. I could testify for the popularity of IDEs in some environments, particularly for Eclipse CDT (although I would prefer to have Eclipse and CDT written in D or C/C++, not in Java, but this is life...).

On 2013-09-13 09:46, eles wrote:

> For the record, I am a heavy user of Eclipse/CDT on Linux, and my
> colleagues are almost all users of the same, albeit some of them on
> Windows. I could testify for the popularity of IDEs in some
> environments, particularly for Eclipse CDT (although I would prefer to
> have Eclipse and CDT written in D or C/C++, not in Java, but this is
> life...).

SWT, the widget toolkit used by Eclipse, is already ported to D (DWT). In addition to that several other Eclipse related projects are ported to D, although not up to date.

https://github.com/d-widget-toolkit/dwt

There's an old abandon IDE project, called Poseidon, which uses a really old version of DWT. It looks quite similar to Eclipse:

http://dsource.org/projects/poseidon
http://dsource.org/projects/poseidon/wiki/Screenshots

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Friday, 13 September 2013 at 12:24:06 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2013-09-13 09:46, eles wrote:
>
> SWT, the widget toolkit used by Eclipse, is already ported to D (DWT). In addition to that several other Eclipse related projects are ported to D, although not up to date.
>
> https://github.com/d-widget-toolkit/dwt
>
> There's an old abandon IDE project, called Poseidon, which uses a really old version of DWT. It looks quite similar to Eclipse:
>
> http://dsource.org/projects/poseidon
> http://dsource.org/projects/poseidon/wiki/Screenshots

Thank you, but for the time being we're not there. However, the goal is not to rewrite Eclipse in D, but having DDT and Mono-D endorsed officially, to provide a Linux alternative to the VisualD.

Am 12.09.2013 23:58, schrieb Nick Sabalausky:
> On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 13:30:55 +0200
> "PauloPinto" <pjmlp@progtools.org> wrote:
>>
>> I don't get the point, what there is VM like when I compile Java,
>> Scala, F#, C# native code?
>>
>> How it is different from compiling Apple/Object/Turbo/Think
>> Pascal, Delphi, Modula-2, Modula-3, Ada, OCaml, Oberon, Haskell,
>> D, Go, Rust to native code?
>>
>> There is no VM about it, other than implementation details.
>>
>> Is the lack of access to processor resources what makes some of
>> them VM languages?
>>
>> Then even ANSI C is a VM language, given that what gives the
>> language lower hardware access capabilities are all language
>> extensions.
>>
>
> Let me try to clarify my main point, since I may have been a bit
> unclear:
>
> I don't really mean to debate "VM vs native" here; I'm aware (as you
> are) that a normally-VMed language can be made to be every bit as fast
> and powerful as any normally-native-compiled language. Heck, all you
> need is a VM that interprets/JITs the LLVM's bytecode, and then bam,
> all of a sudden C/C++ are VM languages.
>
> That "VM vs native" isn't what I was really trying to address. I was
> only trying to address a couple very specific points in your and
> Walter's discussion about "D vs languages like Java/C#/Scala/Clojure".
> And not *all* normally-VM languages in general, but specifically ones
> along those particular lines (frankly, the more popular ones).
>
> Walter had said:
>
>> I think [the C++ resurgence] presents an opportunity
>> for [D]. Driving the C++ resurgence is:
>>
>> 1. demand for high performance computing
>>
>> 2. turning back towards native languages
>>
>> 3. recognition of the value of functional-style programming
>> techniques
>>
>> 4. recognition of the value of safety, encapsulation, etc.
>
> I'll concede to your point that #3 and #4 are addressed not only by D
> but also by several normally-VMed languages (to varying levels of
> success).
>
> However, and this is the core of what I was trying to say: I'm
> disputing that most of those other popular normally-VMed languages
> address Walter's #1 and #2 *as effectively* as D does. My reasoning for
> that goes like this:
>
> - Walter's point #1, "demand for high performance computing" is
>    *partly* about avoiding the runtime/startup costs of
>    interpretation/JIT, but it's *also* about being able to reach down to
>    the low-level when necessary (pointers, reinterpret casts, manual
>    memory management, etc.)
>
> - Walter's point #2, "turning back towards native languages" has much
>    the same duality: It's *partly* about performance, but *also* about
>    being able to access the hardware (ex: drivers, OS-level stuff,
>    certain embedded systems, reduced electricity usage, reduced memory
>    footprint (ex: for phones/tablets with little or no virtual mem),
>    etc.)
>
> - While it's certainly *possible* for a normally-VMed language to offer
>    full low-level abilities, most of them don't (or at least most of the
>    popular ones don't), and the ones that do (ex: C#, AIUI) don't
>    usually (ever?) do it on a level that's on par with C/C++/D.
>
> And I think the fact that most normally-VMed languages lack, or skimp
> on, low-level abilities is no coincidence: There's a natural tendency
> for that specifically because two of the main reasons for using a VM in
> the first place are A, the safety of being banned from low-level access
> and B, the increased cross-platform portability achieved by not
> accessing low-level. Again, it's not that normally-VMed languages
> can't/never get around that (C#/.NET found ways around it), but that
> they *typically* don't, and even when they do it's typically (if ever?)
> not up-to-par with C/C++/D.
>

My point is that there are too many few use cases, D would shine against
mainstream languages, assuming the existence of native compilers for said languages.

Since you used a few times C# as an example, would how we sell D to C# developers, in the hypothetical case .NET 5 would be native code, given the going native trend at Microsoft?

I would say the selling points would mainly be:

- system level programming features outside what unsafe blocks allow for in C#
- meta-programming abilities
- more friendly ways to manage memory manually

All capabilities related to low level coding.

--
Paulo

On Sunday, 15 September 2013 at 16:41:43 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
> I would say the selling points would mainly be:
>
> - system level programming features outside what unsafe blocks allow for in C#
> - meta-programming abilities
> - more friendly ways to manage memory manually
>

- slices !

> All capabilities related to low level coding.
>
> --
> Paulo

On 07/09/2013 23:35, Paulo Pinto wrote:
> Well, if you want a production quality multi-platform IDE the only
> options are InteliJ and Eclipse, both of which are not that well
> received by most C and C++ guys. The target audience for D.

Just because Eclipse is not well received by the C and C++ community (apparently - even that can be debated), that doesn't mean that is a reasonable appraisal of Eclipse. It might just be an outdated opinion.

I understand Eclipse bashing by the Vi/Emacs/text-editor people, that is an ongoing, but familiar and understood debate that has occured many times before, and is not going away anytime soon I think. (and is really not about Eclipse itself, but text editors vs. heavyweight IDEs, etc.)

But Eclipse bashing by people who use say, VisualStudio, that I don't understand. Last time I tried both toolchains, VS seemed as heavy and "bloated" as Eclipse (CDT) was. Yet CDT seemed quite ahead in terms of features, especially semantics-wise (open definition, code complete, etc.). Admittedly this was 3-4 years ago, and I only toyed lightly with C/C++ code, I didn't do any serious development. But I doubt the situation changed such that VS got much better than CDT, if anything, the opposite is more likely.


-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer

On 09/09/2013 10:25, Regan Heath wrote:
> Eclipse is dreadful.  I hate it with a passion.

Any feedback why? Bloat, sluggishness? I do hope it's not just because the way it used to handle refreshing of resources...

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer

Am 16.09.2013 16:22, schrieb Bruno Medeiros:
> On 07/09/2013 23:35, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>> Well, if you want a production quality multi-platform IDE the only
>> options are InteliJ and Eclipse, both of which are not that well
>> received by most C and C++ guys. The target audience for D.
>
> Just because Eclipse is not well received by the C and C++ community
> (apparently - even that can be debated), that doesn't mean that is a
> reasonable appraisal of Eclipse. It might just be an outdated opinion.
>
> I understand Eclipse bashing by the Vi/Emacs/text-editor people, that is
> an ongoing, but familiar and understood debate that has occured many
> times before, and is not going away anytime soon I think. (and is really
> not about Eclipse itself, but text editors vs. heavyweight IDEs, etc.)
>
> But Eclipse bashing by people who use say, VisualStudio, that I don't
> understand. Last time I tried both toolchains, VS seemed as heavy and
> "bloated" as Eclipse (CDT) was. Yet CDT seemed quite ahead in terms of
> features, especially semantics-wise (open definition, code complete,
> etc.). Admittedly this was 3-4 years ago, and I only toyed lightly with
> C/C++ code, I didn't do any serious development. But I doubt the
> situation changed such that VS got much better than CDT, if anything,
> the opposite is more likely.
>
>

And bashing from people that use InteliJ, Netbeans and Eclipse, depending on the customer?

From these three, Eclipse is the one that always gives me more headaches in terms of responsiveness, the workspace concept, build tools that don't make to external build tools, loosing metadata just because and unstable plugins.

--
Paulo

On 13/09/2013 08:46, eles wrote:
> On Saturday, 7 September 2013 at 19:05:03 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> Recent threads here have made it pretty clear that VisualD is a
>> critical piece of D infrastructure. (VisualD integrated D usage into
>> Microsoft Visual Studio.)
>
> Allow me to support this idea, however to suggest that also add a
> cross-platform IDE/plug-in.
>
> This is important for the Linux world.
>
> Current choices are DDT, for Eclipse and Mono-D, for MonoDevelop.
>
> I would vote for the two for the time being and see how things develop.
>
> Official endorsement should increase their visibility, their use and,
> why not, patches.
>
> In the future, they could also be integrated in the installer.
>
> I would also suggest to move DDT on github (Mono-D is already there).
>
> All these, of course, only if respective authors agree. I kindly ask
> them to provide their POV.
>

It's not clear to me what any of these measures would help with.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Manu's point with regards with IDE "official endorsement" was more to try to have the D language organization devs (Walter, Andrei, etc.) *use* VisualD or another IDE and understand the issues around it (especially with regards to compiler/debugger integration).

Just having them make an "official endorsement" of an IDE, or putting it in the DLang github, but without actually using it much, that I'm not sure what it would achieve. The vast majority of other D users will just use the IDE of their choice regardless. The number of contributors to VisualD is likely to not change much either, I suspect.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer