On Wednesday, 25 July 2018 at 16:39:51 UTC, bpr wrote:
> Well, this is a big problem with D IMO. There are a lot of unfinished, half baked features which linger in development for years. How long for precise GC now, over 5 years?

Precise GC is only relevant for 32-bit address space, which is shrinking even in gamedev.

On Wednesday, 25 July 2018 at 20:24:39 UTC, bpr wrote:
> For this and similar uses, tracing GC is fine, better in fact than the alternatives. I'm only making noise about betterC for the cases where C++ dominates and tracing GC is a showstopper.

https://forum.dlang.org/post/cgdkzpltclkufotkpbih@forum.dlang.org like this?

On Thursday, 26 July 2018 at 08:45:41 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
> On Wednesday, 25 July 2018 at 16:39:51 UTC, bpr wrote:
>> Well, this is a big problem with D IMO. There are a lot of unfinished, half baked features which linger in development for years. How long for precise GC now, over 5 years?
>
> Precise GC is only relevant for 32-bit address space, which is shrinking even in gamedev.
>
> On Wednesday, 25 July 2018 at 20:24:39 UTC, bpr wrote:
>> For this and similar uses, tracing GC is fine, better in fact than the alternatives. I'm only making noise about betterC for the cases where C++ dominates and tracing GC is a showstopper.
>
> https://forum.dlang.org/post/cgdkzpltclkufotkpbih@forum.dlang.org like this?

Please, there are still a *lot* of 32 bit targets out there, most of the embedded devices bare metal or Linux based are still 32 bit, and for sure they will still be for the foreseeable future.

Let's not assume how dlang is used or could be used, after all, most of the embedded applications are not really explicit on how are made.

Enabling a slower but precise GC for 32 bit would be acceptable for some applications.

But D GC is getting a lot of criticism and less interest in improving it. I would like to see a goal on opencollective to support improving the precise collector and finish it to the point that it is at least available as an option in the official builds. I will contribute to that goal, I'm sure others will do.

> It's the same story as always, just from complaining, things won't get magically better... (though it would be great if the world worked that way because then maybe my relationships would be more successful :O)

You can choose whatever priorities you prefer for your scholarship and funded projects.

Sorry to have showed my disagreement with some of your choices and strategies.

That was silly, being a loss of time for both of us, indeed.

On Thursday, 26 July 2018 at 09:55:39 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
> You can choose whatever priorities you prefer for your scholarship and funded projects.

I only tried to point out that the SAoC scholarships depend on proposal ideas by the D community (e.g. through the D wiki) and encouraging students to submit their applications.
Thus complaining about the D leadership not respecting your proposal if you didn't even bother to put up a potential proposal in the D wiki isn't really fair to them.

> Sorry to have showed my disagreement with some of your choices and strategies.
>
> That was silly, being a loss of time for both of us, indeed.

Sorry if you misunderstood.
Critics and negative feedback is welcome (!), but if it's just "they don't follow me", it's hard to put it into actionable items and make it happen.

On Tuesday, 24 July 2018 at 11:53:35 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
> On Tuesday, 24 July 2018 at 10:40:33 UTC, Dukc wrote:
>> On Monday, 23 July 2018 at 15:06:16 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
>>> And something that REALLY must be integrated into BetterC's low-level standard library in some way IMHO...
>>
>> They already work, except for the concatenation operator because it obviously requires the GC. And converiting a pointer from C code to D is easy, because you can slice pointers just like arrays -it's just that it won't be bounds checked.
>
> Nice.
>
> But if you want D to be REALLY appealing to a majority of C++ developers, you'd better provide them with the FULL D experience.
>
> And unfortunately, using builtin arrays/strings/slices/maps in the usual way is probably a big part for it.
>
> Don't forget that concatenating strings in C++ is perfectly ALLOWED in C++, WITHOUT using a GC...
>
> #include <iostream>
>
> using namespace std;
>
> int main()
> {
>     string str, str1, str2;
>     str1 = "Hello";
>     str2 = "World";
>     str = str1 + " " + str2;
>     cout << str << endl;
>
>     return 0;
> }
>

Recently in my code base where similar concatenation worked fine in debug mode but crashed in release mode: Win64, VS2017. Worked fine on Linux, GCC 7.3. Had to use std::ostringstream to resolve it, or use use .append().

These kind of UB is what makes a language esoteric. C wins the lot for UBs nevertheless!

On 7/25/2018 2:08 AM, Jim Balter wrote:
> It ought to be obvious that "just use better tools" is far cheaper and more effective, but I think one of the problems is something that I also see in politics quite a bit: a lot of people are more interested in feeling superior or punishing people for their flaws than in avoiding bad outcomes. And there's also the magical "if only everyone would ..." thinking. If you want to get everyone to do something they aren't currently doing, you need some *causal mechanism* (and it has to be feasible, which "avoid all mistakes through discipline" is not).


I recommend anyone interested in design watch "Aviation Disasters", where even the most well-trained pilots fall victim to user interface design flaws, that are always obvious in retrospect.

Like the one where the checklist for loss cabin pressure starts out with fiddling with dials and switches to diagnose the problem. A crew followed that, passed out from hypoxia, crashed and died. The corrected sequence starts with:

  Step 1: put on your oxygen mask.

because it only takes a few seconds to pass out from hypoxia.

Pretty much every episode follows that pattern.

---

My father worked as an accident investigator for the Air Force once upon a time. The AF used standard phrases for things to reduce confusion. One such is "takeoff power", meaning full power as that's what you use for taking off.

A pilot was coming in for a landing once, and the strip was obstructed, so he yelled "takeoff power" to the copilot, who heard "take off power" and pulled the throttles back. The jet sank and crashed.

The AF changed the phrase to "full power" (or "maximum power", I forgot which).

Naturally, this also seems ridiculously obvious - but only in retrospect. Sort of like the infamous Windows "Start" button which turns off the machine :-)

---

My experience is that all programmers (including myself) believe they know what is "intuitively obvious" going forward and what is not. They're all wrong. These things are learned only in hindsight.

On 7/25/2018 3:46 PM, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
> C++ string constants are stupid pointers, no size etc. Indeed one big C++ silly thing that Walter fixed perfectly. He is the only language designed who found and applied the perfect solution for strings, arrays and slices. Big respect to him...

Not everyone agrees with that assessment, but I'm pretty happy that it has worked even better than I'd dared to hope.

On Wednesday, 25 July 2018 at 23:27:45 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:

> But making predictions is a tricky thing and mostly of not much value.

I'm really surprised to hear you say this - so much money in the financial services is poured into making predictions, lots of them and as fast as possible. Isn't that one of the promises of D in that market?

Whatever the reality about that, in the life of all humans the ability to make good predictions is fundamental to survival - if I cross the road now, will I be run over? If I build a chair to make money, will anyone buy it?

Likewise, if I am investing time in developing my skills to further my career, will learning D be a net benefit? This important question depends heavily on predicting the future of D (among many other things). If I use D for my startup, will it be the secret sauce that will propel us to the top, or will I be better off with JDK8 or modern C++?

>  I think it's more interesting to be the change you wish to see in the world.

This has a lovely ring but it doesn't mean not to assess / predict if what you do will provide a net benefit.

On Friday, 27 July 2018 at 15:04:12 UTC, Abdulhaq wrote:
> On Wednesday, 25 July 2018 at 23:27:45 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
>
>> But making predictions is a tricky thing and mostly of not much value.
>
> I'm really surprised to hear you say this - so much money in the financial services is poured into making predictions, lots of them and as fast as possible. Isn't that one of the promises of D in that market?

For me, I think that managing money is about choosing to expose your capital intelligently to the market, balancing the risk of loss against the prospective gain and considering this in a portfolio sense.

Prediction doesn't really come into that

I do personally sometimes write longer term pieces about markets - I wrote a piece in June 2012 asking if dollar is bottoming and I said it was.  But that was based on a gestalt not some Cartesian predictive model.

> Whatever the reality about that, in the life of all humans the ability to make good predictions is fundamental to survival - if I cross the road now, will I be run over? If I build a chair to make money, will anyone buy it?

I disagree.  It's not the prediction that matters but what you do.  It's habits, routines, perception, adaptation and actions that matter.  What people think drives their behaviour isn't what actually does.  See Dr Iain Macgilchrist Master and His Emissary for more.

And in particular if you survive based on having insight then it's interesting to listen to what you say.  If you are known as an expert but don't depend on having insight, it's interesting in how others perceive what you say and how that evolves, but the substance of your analysis is not - without skin in the game, it's just talk.

Bernanke admits he has had no clue about economic developments before they happen.  I used to trade a lot of gilts and the UK debt management office asked me to meet the IMF financial stability review guy in 2005.  He had a bee in his bonnet about hedge funds and the dollar yen carry trade. I told him to look at the banks and what they were buying.  He didn't listen.  I had lunch with Kohn, Fed vice chair in summer 2006.  I asked him about housing.  He wasn't worried at all.

So lots of people talk about all kinds of things. Look at how insightful they have been in the past.  Predictions themselves aren't worth much - recognising change early is.

And for what it's worth I think D is early in a bull market that will last for decades.  The grumbling is funnily enough quite characteristic of such too.

> Likewise, if I am investing time in developing my skills to further my career, will learning D be a net benefit?

It really depends. There are some very good jobs in D.  If it should turn out we hired you some day then most likely you would find it quite satisfying and well paid and be rather glad you learnt D.  If not and not someone else then who knows.

I personally found following my intuition like in a Jack London novel to be better than trying to live by optimising and figuring out the best angle.  But people are different and it's difficult to know.

If you feel like learning D, do it.  If it's purely a career move then there are too many factors to say.


> important question depends heavily on predicting the future of D (among many other things). If I use D for my startup, will it be the secret sauce that will propel us to the top, or will I be better off with JDK8 or modern C++?

Things once alive tend to grow.  The future is unknown if not unimaginable.  I don't think life works like that.  It's more like you pick something for your startup and the start-up fails because your business partner gets divorced.  But through some unlikely chain of coincidences that leads to some better opportunity you never could have found by approaching it head on.

So things are beyond calculation, but not beyond considering intuition and what resonates with you.

See the work of my colleague Flavia Cymbalista - How George Soros Knows What He Knows.


>>  I think it's more interesting to be the change you wish to see in the world.
>
> This has a lovely ring but it doesn't mean not to assess / predict if what you do will provide a net benefit.

It's really up to you what you do.  People who make high stakes decisions - also commercially - I'm really not sure if predictions play the part you think they do.

One little trick.  If you have an insight nobody agrees with then you know you might be onto something when surprises start to come in your direction in a way nobody could have quite imagined.  We are seeing this now with processor challenges for example.

On Friday, 27 July 2018 at 23:42:47 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
> On Friday, 27 July 2018 at 15:04:12 UTC, Abdulhaq wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 25 July 2018 at 23:27:45 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:

> I personally found following my intuition like in a Jack London novel to be better than trying to live by optimising and figuring out the best angle.  But people are different and it's difficult to know.
>...
> So things are beyond calculation, but not beyond considering intuition and what resonates with you.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote an interesting book about how intuition contributes to decision-making (Blink - The Power of Thinking Without Thinking).