On Friday, 21 October 2022 at 15:13:44 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

There aren’t many languages that have both, templates and generics; C++/CLI and C++/CX are the only ones I know and I happen to have some experience with them. (In this nomenclature: template = independent copy of the implementation for every distinct instantiation, cf. C++ or D templates, especially class templates with mutable static variables; generic = one implementation, cf. Java or C#, and static variables cannot depend on the argument types.)

D could introduce generics and it would actually profit more from them than e.g. C++ would because D has first-class reference types and almost no user-defined implicit conversions. Templates are not really a replacement for generics. As an example where generics (would) shine and templates fall flat, consider range interfaces. We have (among others) InputRange and BidirectionalRange. A function taking an InputRange!Base parameter should allow for an argument of type BidirectionalRange!Derived (with Derived and Base classes or interfaces). In D, that is not possible because we cannot express the variance of a type parameter; templates are inherently antithetical to that.

Imagine how much more attractive D would be to OO crowd if it had first-class value type boxing, generics with variance and wildcards, and all the other OO stuff modern OO-fist languages offer. Using Java and C#, it feels like D only has the bare minimum to call itself object-oriented. There was some talk (by Átila, IIRC) that having first-class classes and OO in D was a design error. I have no idea whether there is actually a plan to fade those out improve them to be competitive on that front.

On Wednesday, 26 October 2022 at 22:09:46 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

I don't understand your argument.
Why wouldn't it be possible to make a browser with a GC?

You mean there are no browsers made in SML, OCaml, Eiffel, D, Go, Haskell, Java, C# etc?

On Thursday, 27 October 2022 at 17:37:59 UTC, Quirin Schroll wrote:

I have found that it is to some extent possible to do such type checks of generics with C++ concepts. I've made some attempts for a generic graphics library I've started on, but it gets tedious quite fast. I would imagine you could do some of the same in D in a more ad-hoc matter, but that would be even more tedious.

It basically involves setting up all the constraints and then test them with a single static assert (which involves instantiation, but in the definition file without explicitly using the instance methods).

The C++ concept-feature is helpful in this regard, but not helpful enough to make it pleasant… which basically limits my eagerness to use of it in practice. Still, a move in the right direction.

D has a chance to learn from C++ and create a better concept-feature. Don't replicate it, look at the use cases where C++ concepts become tedious or difficult to get right, then design something better.

This is probably true, but you could instead try to find a way to clearly specify and statically check template requirements.

That is a reasonable angle given the large number of programmers that have experience with Java and C#, but I think D could take a closer look at how templates are done and find out what is missing. When was the last time a feature was added to support generic programming?

OO is not a mistake, I agree. I find it quite frustrating to not have inheritance when programming in Go. Just basic things like having a linked list node in the super class makes things much simpler/cost-efficient when you are mixing types in data-structures.

On Thursday, 27 October 2022 at 18:32:15 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

Modern browsers such as Firefox and Chrome are nothing like NSCA Mosaic or gopher. They are runtimes for application development/games. You cannot make a competitive runtime if your foundation is a source for non-deterministic effects and unnecessary resource consumption.

It is possible, but not workable.

On Thursday, 27 October 2022 at 17:37:59 UTC, Quirin Schroll wrote:

Go annihilated both Java/C# and became the cloud native language without the OOP features

Rust is becoming the system language of choice without the OOP features

Zig is making a dent without the OOP features

The more OOP you put in a language, the worst it becomes

C# is adding more functional and low features because OOP features doesn't cut it

OOP is nice only when kept very simple and minimal

On Thursday, 27 October 2022 at 19:29:15 UTC, ryuukk_ wrote:

OOP is amazing when you stay true to it, which basically no languages do. The only good example of it is something like smalltalk. Or maybe Erlang if you think of each process as an object

(Yes, of course there are other languages, but to name some)

On Thursday, 27 October 2022 at 17:37:59 UTC, Quirin Schroll wrote:

Timon argued on the C++ pattern matching thread [1] that we need "a way to parameterize functions and aggregates that is completely erased at runtime (generally useful, not only for lifetimes; e.g., this is how to fix inout.)". This bears some similarity with generics.

[1] https://forum.dlang.org/post/tj633h$1g4e$1@digitalmars.com

On Thursday, 27 October 2022 at 20:54:32 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:

No. The argument was whether it makes sense to use Rust for building the core engine of Firefox or not. The position I argued against was that you could just as well do it with a standard freeze-the-world GC or Go with full GC. The argument isn't strictly related to D, that is something you brought to the table.

99% of all languages use some kind of GC, most of the programs written are done using some kind of GC. Having automatic memory management is the norm, not the outlier.

That does not mean that non-GC applications can be replaced with a run-of-the-mill GC solution and be competitive. It makes sense to use languages like Rust for even mundane things like cloud web services where you want to conserve memory.

I am not a Rust user at this point, but I also don't assume that people who use it don't understand the tradeoffs.

Do they use the regular D GC all the way?

I have absolutely no idea what you are referring to here.