D Language Foundation Monthly Meeting Summary (September 24, 2021) (page 2)

October 04, 2021

Re: D Language Foundation Monthly Meeting Summary (September 24, 2021)

Posted by Ki Rill
in reply to Mike Parker

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Ki Rill

Posted in reply to Mike Parker

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On Friday, 1 October 2021 at 12:32:20 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

[...]

These are great news! As for the new slogan, I believe we need to put some emphasis on D's modelling power. If I come up with something decent, I'll post it.

Meanwhile:

(1) Reliable, fast. (2) Safe, not strict. (3) Smooth start, deploy.

(1) - "no" unexpected surprises, improved memory safety, easy to catch bugs such as trying to index a pointer in a @safe function, out-of-bounds array write/read and similar; an almost instantaneous compilation, performance similar to that of C/C++.
(2) - continuing from (1), it's @safe, but you make the final choice how far you want to go.
(3) - it's "relatively" easy to start a new project in D using DUB: dub init/add/run. Need a library that's not available in DUB? Create a D interface to C header file and use it. There are tools that can automate this process, etc.

I put "..." because it's not always the case.

About (1): I've written some C++ code recently. I was very happy with the code. I've read the code multiple times in search for potential bugs and errors. I decided to rewrite some of the code in D just to see the difference code-wise and performance-wise. Guess what happened? It didn't compile. I got out-of-bounds access error in D meanwhile the C++ version ran happily with no sign of any failure.

On Monday, 4 October 2021 at 15:44:11 UTC, Ki Rill wrote:

That's a classic with C++ and static arrays. C++ now has the STL array which is standard now but who cares because not many know about it and there so many ways to do the same things in C++ you get lost. Also, it's ugly.

In the case for D, I think D is a "sky is the limit" kind of language. D handles so many different areas, from low level to rather high level quite nicely. However, this together with one of the best metaprogramming out there, the versatility of the language is really among the highest.

Now, the metaprogramming in C++ is just as powerful but not many people can handle it and they tend to avoid more complicated solutions. With D, metaprogramming is much more approachable and tasks that the programmer was unable to do in C++ can be done in D relatively easy.

On 10/3/21 2:24 PM, James Blachly wrote: > Cons: Potential association with silicon valley phrase "move fast and > break things". I am going off-topic but I feel I have to make a correction there. As a person who worked and lived in Silicon Valley since 1996 (since 1994 in the greater Bay Area), I can safely claim that that phrase has never been a Silicon Valley phrase. It was used by Facebook in their less enlightened days (a business that may arguably be associated with Silicon Valley by their postal address). Ali

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