ImportC was created to make interfacing with existing C libraries a *lot* easier.

On 12/8/2023 1:06 AM, Hors wrote:
> This is one of biggest mistakes in dlang's design. They tried to be "everything" (being both garbage collected and not, being both safe and unsafe system language...), it backfired because as you said, you always need to exclude some people or features.

I often use a mix of gc and malloc in a program - they each have their uses. It's sort of like using a struct or using a class - they coexist fine, and you can mix and match as you please.

Rust also has both safe and unsafe code.

On Monday, 18 December 2023 at 05:46:20 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 12/8/2023 1:06 AM, Hors wrote:
>> This is one of biggest mistakes in dlang's design. They tried to be "everything" (being both garbage collected and not, being both safe and unsafe system language...), it backfired because as you said, you always need to exclude some people or features.
>
> I often use a mix of gc and malloc in a program - they each have their uses. It's sort of like using a struct or using a class - they coexist fine, and you can mix and match as you please.
>
> Rust also has both safe and unsafe code.

It would be interesting to hear from AAA game devs on this thread regarding their thoughts on garbage collection.

Unreal Engine implemented a garbage collector for their UObject (https://unrealcommunity.wiki/garbage-collection-36d1da) and the collector runs every 30-60 seconds.

Many game studios implement their own STL (Or rather standard library, avoiding templates) in C++ for debuggability and creating special cases for data structures (See EASTL as an example).

I think the major factor with D not being adopted more by AAA studios is legacy C and C++ codebases. Some game studios live title to title, so it's hard to start from scratch. Otherwise there may also exist other approval issues of getting LDC available on consoles with the Developer Kits (Again, need advocates to do this effectively volunteering after work to sell the idea).

Worth also listening to Ethan Watson's talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YjLW7anNfc

Anyway, just a few quick thoughts.

On Monday, 18 December 2023 at 05:46:20 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>
> I often use a mix of gc and malloc in a program - they each have their uses. It's sort of like using a struct or using a class - they coexist fine, and you can mix and match as you please.
>
> Rust also has both safe and unsafe code.

Have you ever thought about keeping the raw pointers as they are. Classes are references types that are allocated using GC. Structs are value types that cannot directly be allocated using GC. If you want to allocate a struct using GC they need to be encapsulated in a GC object. Manual heap allocation are entirely done with raw pointers as before.

This is essentially what Swift does, classes are references types that are allocated using GC and structs are value types that you cannot directly allocate on the heap or GC on its own.

This change is breaking change but can be done. A few standard library types must be rewritten though but that is under the hood not so exposed to the programmer.

On Monday, 18 December 2023 at 10:37:20 UTC, Mike Shah wrote:
> On Monday, 18 December 2023 at 05:46:20 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> On 12/8/2023 1:06 AM, Hors wrote:
>>> This is one of biggest mistakes in dlang's design. They tried to be "everything" (being both garbage collected and not, being both safe and unsafe system language...), it backfired because as you said, you always need to exclude some people or features.
>>
>> I often use a mix of gc and malloc in a program - they each have their uses. It's sort of like using a struct or using a class - they coexist fine, and you can mix and match as you please.
>>
>> Rust also has both safe and unsafe code.
>
> It would be interesting to hear from AAA game devs on this thread regarding their thoughts on garbage collection.
>
> Unreal Engine implemented a garbage collector for their UObject (https://unrealcommunity.wiki/garbage-collection-36d1da) and the collector runs every 30-60 seconds.
>
> Many game studios implement their own STL (Or rather standard library, avoiding templates) in C++ for debuggability and creating special cases for data structures (See EASTL as an example).
>
> I think the major factor with D not being adopted more by AAA studios is legacy C and C++ codebases. Some game studios live title to title, so it's hard to start from scratch. Otherwise there may also exist other approval issues of getting LDC available on consoles with the Developer Kits (Again, need advocates to do this effectively volunteering after work to sell the idea).
>
> Worth also listening to Ethan Watson's talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YjLW7anNfc
>
> Anyway, just a few quick thoughts.

C# took up that role, thanks to XNA, Unity, and many studios adopting Windows Forms/WPF alongside C++/CLI for their tooling.

Capcom shipped Devil May Cry for Playstation 5 using their own fork of .NET Core/C#, and is in the process of updating their in-house engine to .NET 8.

D had an opportunity with Remedy, sadly it wasn't picked up by other studios.