On 7/26/2013 11:20 PM, Brad Roberts wrote:
> Um.. unless I'm reading that maze of #if's and conditionals wrong.. that's only
> being done in a few cases, specifically never on linux.  And either way, are you
> asserting that all compilers do that?

No. I'm asserting that it is a compiler issue, and an easily dealt with one, not a language issue.

As for why the backend does it for some platforms and not for others, I was merely mimicking what other compilers did for each platform. I know that Win32 requires this behavior, I was unsure about Linux. We can certainly investigate turning it on for Linux.

On Friday, 26 July 2013 at 19:54:58 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 7/26/2013 10:25 AM, deadalnix wrote:
>> You emphasis it quite well, and that is certainly true for a car, a plane, or
>> anything potentially dangerous.
>>
>> Different tradeoff apply when you talk about a video game, a media player or and
>> IRC client.
>
> Of course.
>
> There is a cost of failure, though, to things like video games and media players. Annoying your customers. I've dumped using many media players because of their tendency to freeze up. I like to set my music on in the morning and run it all day. Having to regularly restart it means "abandon it and try a different one."
>

This kind of software can leverage way to recovers that would be untolerable in an airplane (for instance because they only work most of the time, or would produce an erratic behavior for a short period of time, like an audio glitch).

D right now is not very friendly to such use cases as it is designed to crash hard as soon as something wrong happens.

> My current media player freezes about once every couple weeks. It's infrequent enough to be tolerable. The Ubuntu one dies about once an hour. I gave up on that long ago.

On linux, I uses audacious for music, it is never crashing.

On 7/27/2013 12:40 AM, deadalnix wrote:
> This kind of software can leverage way to recovers that would be untolerable in
> an airplane (for instance because they only work most of the time, or would
> produce an erratic behavior for a short period of time, like an audio glitch).
>
> D right now is not very friendly to such use cases as it is designed to crash
> hard as soon as something wrong happens.

I think you're seriously mistaken about this not being "friendly". I don't think there's anything "friendly" about a program that goes wild and keeps on running. My experience with such programs (DOS programs would not crash, they'd just run wild) is universally unfriendly.

The way to deal tolerantly with errant processes is to have an "executive" process that spawns the worker process. It monitors the worker, and if the worker crashes, the executive simply respawns it. This is a reasonably friendly way to do things. Continuing to run already crashed programs is a very bad idea.

After all, what if your corrupted program now proceeds to corrupt all your user's profile data? I don't think the user would consider that friendly. What if your media player scrambles the playlists? (Happened to me.) Oh joy, I loved that one.

No thanks.

(I've been arguing for decades against the idea that somehow crashed programs should keep on running. I keep hearing all kinds of explanations for why zombies should keep on running, even though you have no idea what they will do (except that it will be bad).)

On Friday, 26 July 2013 at 19:50:22 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

> But I see no point. 32 bit code is already dead on OSX, and is rapidly dying on Linux and Windows. I hear from more and more outfits that they've transitioned to 64 bits and are not looking back.

32bit is far from dead on ARM.

--
/Jacob Carlborg

On Friday, 26 July 2013 at 19:54:58 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

> My current media player freezes about once every couple weeks. It's infrequent enough to be tolerable. The Ubuntu one dies about once an hour. I gave up on that long ago.

Then you should use a Mac. They're (in)famous for when the whole computer freezes the music keeps playing.

--
/Jacob Carlborg

On Saturday, 27 July 2013 at 10:31:10 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On Friday, 26 July 2013 at 19:54:58 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>
>> My current media player freezes about once every couple weeks. It's infrequent enough to be tolerable. The Ubuntu one dies about once an hour. I gave up on that long ago.
>
> Then you should use a Mac. They're (in)famous for when the whole computer freezes the music keeps playing.
>
> --
> /Jacob Carlborg

Or, in one memorable case for me, freezing and entering some sort of feedback loop, ending with my sub shaking things off my desk.

On 7/27/2013 3:24 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On Friday, 26 July 2013 at 19:50:22 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>
>> But I see no point. 32 bit code is already dead on OSX, and is rapidly dying
>> on Linux and Windows. I hear from more and more outfits that they've
>> transitioned to 64 bits and are not looking back.
>
> 32bit is far from dead on ARM.

True - and DMD is far from an ARM back end :-)

On 7/27/2013 3:31 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On Friday, 26 July 2013 at 19:54:58 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>
>> My current media player freezes about once every couple weeks. It's infrequent
>> enough to be tolerable. The Ubuntu one dies about once an hour. I gave up on
>> that long ago.
>
> Then you should use a Mac. They're (in)famous for when the whole computer
> freezes the music keeps playing.

I use a Turtlebeach Audiotron.

On Saturday, 27 July 2013 at 17:52:20 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> I use a Turtlebeach Audiotron.

That may be your problem right there. Turtle Beach seems to make high-quality products, but in reality the quality is extremely poor. I have 5 (5!) friends now, as well as myself, who bought a Turtle Beach product, and had it break within a year and a half (conveniently for Turtle Beach, the warranty only lasts a year), or even be DOA. I would never buy a Turtle Beach product again, ever.

On 7/27/2013 11:50 AM, Meta wrote:
> On Saturday, 27 July 2013 at 17:52:20 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> I use a Turtlebeach Audiotron.
>
> That may be your problem right there. Turtle Beach seems to make high-quality
> products, but in reality the quality is extremely poor. I have 5 (5!) friends
> now, as well as myself, who bought a Turtle Beach product, and had it break
> within a year and a half (conveniently for Turtle Beach, the warranty only lasts
> a year), or even be DOA. I would never buy a Turtle Beach product again, ever.

I've been running the Audiotron for maybe 12 years now, all day every day. I like it enough that I've bought two others. I look for a replacement now and then, but none offer the Audiotron's mix of features:

1. operable from the front panel or a remote
2. provides a web interface so it can be controlled from any computer on the LAN
3. does not require a server demon - it can simply read shared directories on the LAN for the music
4. it is very low power
5. plays internet radio stations too
6. has shuffle

For example, the Roku box I have can play music it sucks from the LAN. However,

1. need to connect it to a TV in order to control it
2. no web interface
3. can't use Roku remote without a TV display
4. requires a server demon
5. does not have shuffle

13 years after the Audiotron, the Roku is apparently the zenith of loser technology. I mean, it doesn't have shuffle? What the hell?