On 17/06/2015 5:40 p.m., Nick B wrote:
> On Wednesday, 17 June 2015 at 04:51:44 UTC, Rikki Cattermole wrote:
>> On 17/06/2015 6:41 a.m., Nick B wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, 16 June 2015 at 06:29:46 UTC, Rikki Cattermole
>
>>
>> Oh please say Christchurch!
>
> sorry for the confusion. Its Wellington.

Ahh right right.

On 2015-06-16 01:53, Nick B wrote:

> Looking to the future, as volumes grow, they could:
> 1.  Stay with PHP & C#.net, and bring on servers as volumes grow.
> 2.  Migrate to C#.net in time
> 3.  Migrate to D in time.
>
> Any comments or suggestions on the above?

Anything would be better than PHP. You can't go wrong picking either D or C# over PHP.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

Am Mon, 15 Jun 2015 23:53:04 +0000
schrieb "Nick B" <nick.barbalich@gmail.com>:

> Hi.
> 
> There is a startup in New Zealand that I have some dealings with at present. They have build most of their original code in PHP, (as this was quick and easy) but they also use some C#.net for interfacing to accounting appls on clients machines. The core PHP application runs in the cloud at present and talks to accountings applications in the cloud. They use the PHP symfony framework.
> 
> High speed in not important, but accuracy, error handling, and scalability is, as they are processing accounting transactions. They have a new CEO on board, and he would like to review the companies technical direction.
> 
> Their client base is small but growing quickly.  I know that PHP is not a great language, and my knowledge of D is reasonable, while I have poor knowledge of C#.net.
> 
> Looking to the future, as volumes grow, they could:
> 1.  Stay with PHP & C#.net, and bring on servers as volumes grow.
> 2.  Migrate to C#.net in time
> 3.  Migrate to D in time.
> 
> Any comments or suggestions on the above?

I'd probably migrate the PHP to ASP/C#.net and call it a day.
You get WYSIWYG web page editing with error checking for forms
and lists with database table backing store.
Without your explicit library needs it is difficult to explain
to you if and how D could work in this case. As for bugs, it
seems that commercial users get some priority bonus.

-- 
Marco

On 06/17/2015 12:25 AM, Nick B wrote:
> On Tuesday, 16 June 2015 at 08:47:40 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
>> On Monday, 15 June 2015 at 23:53:06 UTC, Nick B wrote:
>>> Hi.
>>>
>>>
>>> Any comments or suggestions on the above?
>>
>> Both C# and D sound like good fits there. It depends on whether it's
>> the sort of team who like to innovate and explore new possibilities or
>> whether they want a completely fleshed out, stable ecosystem.
>
>
> Is anyone else able to comment on the comparisions/differences between
> C#.Net & D ??

I'm obviously biased, being on the D forums and all (although I used to be a fan of both languages, a long time ago), but IMHO:

> Any comments on cost ?

I find D lets you get things done quicker/easier (worker cost) and potentially run a little faster (hardware cost). Though I image other arguments might be possible in favor of C#, too.

> Any comments on getting bugs fixed ?
>

Not too bad in D. With D, bugs do get fixed, AND if you really need a fix right away you can always just DIY.

With C#, you're pretty much stuck with whatever MS feels like working on. There's very little feedback and community outreach. It's *their* product, and their business strategy dictates where development resources go. For example, people have been needing some sort of IArithmetic (counterpart to IComparable) ever since generics were first introduced back in v2 (so that you could, y'know, actually do arithmetic generically), but even to this day MS never really did bother to put it in or really even acknowledge the matter at all.

On 06/17/2015 02:30 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2015-06-16 01:53, Nick B wrote:
>
>> Looking to the future, as volumes grow, they could:
>> 1.  Stay with PHP & C#.net, and bring on servers as volumes grow.

You mentioned cost elsewhere, and this can be a big cost that doesn't scale very well.

>> 2.  Migrate to C#.net in time
>> 3.  Migrate to D in time.
>>
>> Any comments or suggestions on the above?
>
> Anything would be better than PHP. You can't go wrong picking either D
> or C# over PHP.
>

Definitely.

http://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/

Even Facebook, every PHP-proponent's favorite example of a supposed "PHP user" has spent many years putting lots of effort into:

1. Mitigating PHP's problems (big coding standards guidelines based on many years experience by an army of developers, plus completely rewriting the PHP engine itself something like three times, see "HipHop". They don't use stock "Zend" PHP.)

2. Migrating *away* from PHP. See Facebook's own "Hack" language.

On Wednesday, 17 June 2015 at 04:25:38 UTC, Nick B wrote:
> On Tuesday, 16 June 2015 at 08:47:40 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
>> On Monday, 15 June 2015 at 23:53:06 UTC, Nick B wrote:
>>> Hi.
>>>
>>>
>>> Any comments or suggestions on the above?
>>
>> Both C# and D sound like good fits there. It depends on whether it's the sort of team who like to innovate and explore new possibilities or whether they want a completely fleshed out, stable ecosystem.
>
>
> Is anyone else able to comment on the comparisions/differences between C#.Net & D ??
> Any comments on cost ?
> Any comments on getting bugs fixed ?

I've been working on developing the entire Web Stack in D, down from the kernel to the multiplexed HTTP/2 protocol and the high-level framework that queries the database and serves the response in json.

If I did so at a high personal investment cost, it was so those insane web development languages wouldn't bother me anymore. In D, if you have a bug, you are 100% certain that you can resolve it yourself. You have all the C/C++ tools available to go all the way down to the memory and debug anything you want. You have statically typed language that allows huge projects to breathe very healthy and increment features at low cost.

Nothing beats D in my opinion. It's 20 years ahead of everything out there. All you need to do, is know how to use it and understand it enough to resolve any bugs you come up with.

On Wednesday, 17 June 2015 at 16:28:42 UTC, Etienne wrote:
> I've been working on developing the entire Web Stack in D, down from the kernel to the multiplexed HTTP/2 protocol and the high-level framework that queries the database and serves the response in json.

Your work looks very interesting, although I haven't used it yet.  Any idea how far away it might be from being something that someone could use in an enterprise environment simply, in the same kind of way that vibed is easy?  I appreciate that making it broadly usable may not be what interests you, and may be a project for someone else.


> If I did so at a high personal investment cost, it was so those insane web development languages wouldn't bother me anymore. In D, if you have a bug, you are 100% certain that you can resolve it yourself. You have all the C/C++ tools available to go all the way down to the memory and debug anything you want. You have statically typed language that allows huge projects to breathe very healthy and increment features at low cost.
>
> Nothing beats D in my opinion. It's 20 years ahead of everything out there. All you need to do, is know how to use it and understand it enough to resolve any bugs you come up with.

Any chance you could write a bit more on this?  Your personal story and why you believe this.  We could post on the Wiki as part of a series of narratives on people who have found D helpful.  Stories are a powerful complement to just ticking off features.

Thanks.


Laeeth.

On Wednesday, 17 June 2015 at 18:40:01 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
> On Wednesday, 17 June 2015 at 16:28:42 UTC, Etienne wrote:
>> I've been working on developing the entire Web Stack in D, down from the kernel to the multiplexed HTTP/2 protocol and the high-level framework that queries the database and serves the response in json.
>
> Your work looks very interesting, although I haven't used it yet.
>  Any idea how far away it might be from being something that someone could use in an enterprise environment simply, in the same kind of way that vibed is easy?  I appreciate that making it broadly usable may not be what interests you, and may be a project for someone else.
>
>
>> If I did so at a high personal investment cost, it was so those insane web development languages wouldn't bother me anymore. In D, if you have a bug, you are 100% certain that you can resolve it yourself. You have all the C/C++ tools available to go all the way down to the memory and debug anything you want. You have statically typed language that allows huge projects to breathe very healthy and increment features at low cost.
>>
>> Nothing beats D in my opinion. It's 20 years ahead of everything out there. All you need to do, is know how to use it and understand it enough to resolve any bugs you come up with.
>
> Any chance you could write a bit more on this?  Your personal story and why you believe this.

Yes I too would be interested on more background as to your opinion, as why its 20 years ahead of everything else out there.

On Thursday, 18 June 2015 at 02:01:33 UTC, Nick B wrote:
> Yes I too would be interested on more background as to your opinion, as why its 20 years ahead of everything else out there.

Natively compiled: Moore's law predicts that the burden in advancements in computing speed will migrate into software. This may be enough to rule out increasingly the use of managed language for developments where cost is important and more than 1 server will be needed. Compiling vs interpreting can make all the difference between requiring 1000 servers vs 10 servers.

Template metaprogramming: This is the first reason I've chosen to use D in the first place. The idea that I could write code that writes code, and make it statically typed and safe. C++ has this but the errors are insane, the static if is not there, CTFE is just starting to pick up, there's no traits or very limited compile-time reflection (ie. static if(__traits(compiles, { some_operation(); })). The compile time is also much slower, there's simply too many legacy features in the language that have made it suffer in the long run. Even a package manager like dub is something nobody can agree on, because the community is so divided.

Overall, it would take decades for the most powerful language C++ to reach the current state of D in terms of compile-time capabilities. This is important because preprocessors are the only alternatives and they suck for larger projects.

I won't cover again everything that the dlang site can say about the language, and I could go on with how D has the entire web stack (I didn't release it fully yet) but that would be throwing myself flowers :P

On Wednesday, 17 June 2015 at 18:40:01 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
>  Any idea how far away it might be from being something that someone could use in an enterprise environment simply, in the same kind of way that vibed is easy?  I appreciate that making it broadly usable may not be what interests you, and may be a project for someone else.

I would say 3 months. So it'll probably be a year considering how off my last estimates were. Of course, I never calculated any help (and haven't gotten any really)

> Any chance you could write a bit more on this?  Your personal story and why you believe this.  We could post on the Wiki as part of a series of narratives on people who have found D helpful.  Stories are a powerful complement to just ticking off features.

I started off as a C, C#, Javascript & PHP programmer with 6 years of experience, building mostly e-commerce and information systems on a contractual basis. One day, I decided I had enough and wanted to invest my time in a faster web engine because I was tired of seeing all those slow and bloated libraries that can barely serve 10 requests per second when they're put to any practical use.

I decided to go for C++ and learn everything I could about writing an integrated solution. I found interesting libraries but everytime I wanted to add a feature, I'd have to import another library and it again became bloated but in terms of code base. Nothing seemed to work together (Qt & Boost?).

The D programming language came up frequently in search results when looking for C++-related concepts, and I saw everything I needed in Phobos. The language features seemed similar at first but I quickly realized how much more convenient the language was as a whole and it felt much like a managed language overall.

Even the vibe.d library was much more advanced than what I could find with an open source license that allowed static compilation at the time (1 yr 1/2 ago), so I went forward with that and worked my way through. The most interesting part is that everytime I had a problem, I never had to google the error from the compiler because it was quite straightforward. I did have to debug the memory a lot but all the tools from C/C++ work for that.

So now I can build a full web application/server executable in less than 2mb packed, and it runs faster than anything out there. It's standalone, works cross-platform, etc. I really have to put the blame on the language for the speed at which this very large project was finished. I completed the STL-equivalent memory library, TLS/crypto security library, the low-level async TCP library, the HTTP/2 implementation and the integration of everything in a web application framework within about 10 months. I learned the language for about 6 months through that coming from a background more familiar with managed languages. I can't say D isn't meant for large projects, it's a really fucking solid language that was built for the future.