6 ms·

i dont think going after c++ will help d's adoption it didn't work in the past i dont know what have changed to make it work in the future i dont remember Go

by systems 10y ago

i dont think going after c++ will help d's adoption it didn't work in the past i dont know what have changed to make it work in the future i dont remember Go or Rust ever focusing on comparing themselves to another language as much as d compare itself to c++ d should create its own path same way any other more popular language did

butterisgood 10y ago
C++ will always have a leg up over D for me due to the GC stuff. I like not having GC in C++. When I want a GC'd C-like I use Go. D has to find a space between those two for me and a lot of other people. I don't dislike D. I think D has a LOT of great work done in it. I just really want all my libraries to be able to be used without GC. And I'm not sure it's really feasible to have each foot in either world and not just get split down the middle. Can someone argue against this worry? It's literally the only thing stopping me spending more time with D. Also I've been coding in Ada (lord help me) for fun. Contracts are interesting.
- loeg 10y ago
  I've been told (in other threads on HN) that you can disable GC in D. I don't know how that integrates with stdlib (or other library) bits that use GC (are they disallowed, or do they fail at runtime?).
  - lossolo 10y ago
    You can't allocate with GC in @nogc functions, you will get compile time error. There is ongoing work in standard library (Phobos) to make it work without GC.
    - loeg 10y ago
      So if you @nogc main(), you're set? Thanks.
      - andralex 10y ago
        Affirmative.
- shakna 10y ago
  You don't have to have GC in D, and manual memory can work side-by-side the GC with or without disabling it. You can delete objects early, or call GC.disable
  - bachmeier 10y ago
    The safer approach is to mark that code @nogc. There is no guarantee that the GC won't run when calling GC.disable. You do get a guarantee with @nogc.
    - destructionator 10y ago
      > There is no guarantee that the GC won't run when calling GC.disable. If you have called GC.disable, the collector becomes `return;`. Sure, the GC function is called, but it doesn't do anything, it just immediately returns.
      - bachmeier 10y ago
        I'm not sure tbh. The documentation says "Collections may continue to occur in instances where the implementation deems necessary for correct program behavior, such as during an out of memory condition." My understanding from the forum discussions is that a collection could happen and you would not know about it.
- penpapersw 10y ago
  An important factor in choosing a language is platform. I'm not going to choose Go or D to write an iOS app in, because it would be painful and buggy, if it's even possible in the first place. I'm restricted to Objective-C(++) if I want it to really be a high quality & native app.
  - johncolanduoni 10y ago
    Most languages with a C FFI (and ARM/Mach-O compiler support) can do pretty well on iOS. Rust bindings to Objective-C APIs are pretty painless for example.
  - klickverbot 10y ago
    D can interface with Objective-C just fine. The Apple-provided tooling will indeed be more convenient for the developer, but the result the end user sees will be a "high quality & native app" just the same.
- phaylon 10y ago
  I'm only lurking on the D forums, so this should probably be taken with a grain of salt. From what I understand the GC is required for various array, hash map and string operations, and things like closures and exceptions (maybe assertions?). Though there is work being done on fixes and alternatives (scope limitations, ref counted things). This does seem to come up sometimes. I'm wondering if it makes sense to add a "end-vision for GC-less D" section to the D GC documentation, now that there are various undertakings to make it easier. Might also help with finding volunteers that care about @nogc to help out with various bits.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    There is a pull request in now to make throwing exceptions GC-free. It hasn't been merged yet, but should be soon.
- atilaneves 10y ago
  There's been a lot of work recently to enable GC-free D code. Yes, that means some of the standard library is off bounds, as are some of the built-in operators (new, array concatenation). However, you can have _static_ guarantees that there will be no GC allocations whatsoever. Writing an executable? `void main() @nogc { /* ... */ }` Done. I've written a log of `@nogc` code lately.
  - gpderetta 10y ago
    Then what? How much of the standard library and the library ecosystem compiles with nogc? Subsetting languages (and comunities) usually doesn't end well...
    - atilaneves 10y ago
      Depends on the kind of code you write. std.algorithm? No problem
- buzzybee 10y ago
  Remedy Entertainment has a talk - actually two talks, one from 2013 and one from 2016 [0], about how they added D to their game engine, replacing a major subsystem, and then shipped a AAA title(Quantum Break) with it. The GC did not present a major issue although the talk notes that their solution was "unfinished" and got the result they wanted by wasting memory instead of what they initially aimed for(ARC, this is work-in-progress for D [1][2]). Most of the nuts-and-bolts work came from achieving smooth integration with the C++ codebase, and building for the release devices. [0] http://dconf.org/2016/talks/watson.html http://dconf.org/2016/talks/watson.html [1] https://wiki.dlang.org/Language_design_discussions#Automatic_Reference_Counting_.28ARC.29_as_an_alternative_to_D.27s_Garbage_Collector https://wiki.dlang.org/Language_design_discussions#Automatic... [2] http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/ARC_in_D_296740.html http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/ARC_in_D...
  - pixel_fcker 10y ago
    The slides say the GC never collects, which is the same as having no GC.
- p0nce 10y ago
  After a while decreasing GC usage in D, I ended up removing it completely. I got reduced memory usage but no speed gain. What I've found is that before you remove the GC, you can turn the overhead from excessive to very affordable with optimizations. Especially today with std.experimental.allocator and -profile=gc
johncolanduoni 10y ago
I'm a fan of Rust, but I think you must be reading a different HN if you don't think the Rust community focuses on comparing it to C and C++. The Go language creators have specifically stated that they created Go to solve problems they had with C and C++: http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/100428.html http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/100428.html
- k__ 10y ago
  I don't think "focuses on comparing it to C" is the right phrasing, but being a drop-in replacement for C is certainly a killer feature.
shakna 10y ago
Rust has Mozilla, and the community does tend to appear in C/++ threads. Go has Google. Swift & ObjC has Apple. D... Doesn't have a large mindshare/corporation backing it.
- systems 10y ago
  dont reduce Rust and Go relative success to just having google or mozilla Rust and Go .. made better design choices that made them more popular
  - camus2 10y ago
    > dont reduce Rust and Go relative success to just having google or Mozilla I don't think Go would have been popular without Google. It's easier to sell a solution to your manager when it is backed by a big org, and when people are paid fulltime to work on it. Same for Rust and Mozilla. The barrier for adoption of new languages is pretty high today in enterprise space.
    - systems 10y ago
      so why did python and ruby became popular and why isnt dart more popular
      - pcwalton 10y ago
        Python became popular because many people saw it as a cleaned-up Perl, and ESR wrote about it. Ruby became popular because of Rails. Dart isn't popular because it was designed to be a browser language but did little to court Web developers who like JS (contrary to the HN consensus, a lot of Web developers actually like JS) or other browser vendors.
        systems 10y ago
        so you agree with me, we python and ruby didnt need a huge corporate backing and dart even with some corporate backing didnt become popular more examples that debunk that corporate backing is what made rust or go ... are scala and clojure, scala being way more popular than d and clojure ... and neither have corporate backing in conclusion, you dont really need corporate backing if you have a nicely designed language that have its own path
Ace17 10y ago
Please note that, GC or not GC, you still can have deterministic destruction (e.g RAII).

by systems 10y ago

butterisgood 10y ago

C++ will always have a leg up over D for me due to the GC stuff. I like not having GC in C++. When I want a GC'd C-like I use Go. D has to find a space between those two for me and a lot of other people. I don't dislike D. I think D has a LOT of great work done in it. I just really want all my libraries to be able to be used without GC. And I'm not sure it's really feasible to have each foot in either world and not just get split down the middle. Can someone argue against this worry? It's literally the only thing stopping me spending more time with D. Also I've been coding in Ada (lord help me) for fun. Contracts are interesting.

loeg 10y ago
I've been told (in other threads on HN) that you can disable GC in D. I don't know how that integrates with stdlib (or other library) bits that use GC (are they disallowed, or do they fail at runtime?).
- lossolo 10y ago
  You can't allocate with GC in @nogc functions, you will get compile time error. There is ongoing work in standard library (Phobos) to make it work without GC.
  - loeg 10y ago
    So if you @nogc main(), you're set? Thanks.
    - andralex 10y ago
      Affirmative.
shakna 10y ago
You don't have to have GC in D, and manual memory can work side-by-side the GC with or without disabling it. You can delete objects early, or call GC.disable
- bachmeier 10y ago
  The safer approach is to mark that code @nogc. There is no guarantee that the GC won't run when calling GC.disable. You do get a guarantee with @nogc.
  - destructionator 10y ago
    > There is no guarantee that the GC won't run when calling GC.disable. If you have called GC.disable, the collector becomes `return;`. Sure, the GC function is called, but it doesn't do anything, it just immediately returns.
    - bachmeier 10y ago
      I'm not sure tbh. The documentation says "Collections may continue to occur in instances where the implementation deems necessary for correct program behavior, such as during an out of memory condition." My understanding from the forum discussions is that a collection could happen and you would not know about it.
penpapersw 10y ago
An important factor in choosing a language is platform. I'm not going to choose Go or D to write an iOS app in, because it would be painful and buggy, if it's even possible in the first place. I'm restricted to Objective-C(++) if I want it to really be a high quality & native app.
- johncolanduoni 10y ago
  Most languages with a C FFI (and ARM/Mach-O compiler support) can do pretty well on iOS. Rust bindings to Objective-C APIs are pretty painless for example.
- klickverbot 10y ago
  D can interface with Objective-C just fine. The Apple-provided tooling will indeed be more convenient for the developer, but the result the end user sees will be a "high quality & native app" just the same.
phaylon 10y ago
I'm only lurking on the D forums, so this should probably be taken with a grain of salt. From what I understand the GC is required for various array, hash map and string operations, and things like closures and exceptions (maybe assertions?). Though there is work being done on fixes and alternatives (scope limitations, ref counted things). This does seem to come up sometimes. I'm wondering if it makes sense to add a "end-vision for GC-less D" section to the D GC documentation, now that there are various undertakings to make it easier. Might also help with finding volunteers that care about @nogc to help out with various bits.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  There is a pull request in now to make throwing exceptions GC-free. It hasn't been merged yet, but should be soon.
atilaneves 10y ago
There's been a lot of work recently to enable GC-free D code. Yes, that means some of the standard library is off bounds, as are some of the built-in operators (new, array concatenation). However, you can have _static_ guarantees that there will be no GC allocations whatsoever. Writing an executable? `void main() @nogc { /* ... */ }` Done. I've written a log of `@nogc` code lately.
- gpderetta 10y ago
  Then what? How much of the standard library and the library ecosystem compiles with nogc? Subsetting languages (and comunities) usually doesn't end well...
  - atilaneves 10y ago
    Depends on the kind of code you write. std.algorithm? No problem
buzzybee 10y ago
Remedy Entertainment has a talk - actually two talks, one from 2013 and one from 2016 [0], about how they added D to their game engine, replacing a major subsystem, and then shipped a AAA title(Quantum Break) with it. The GC did not present a major issue although the talk notes that their solution was "unfinished" and got the result they wanted by wasting memory instead of what they initially aimed for(ARC, this is work-in-progress for D [1][2]). Most of the nuts-and-bolts work came from achieving smooth integration with the C++ codebase, and building for the release devices. [0] http://dconf.org/2016/talks/watson.html http://dconf.org/2016/talks/watson.html [1] https://wiki.dlang.org/Language_design_discussions#Automatic_Reference_Counting_.28ARC.29_as_an_alternative_to_D.27s_Garbage_Collector https://wiki.dlang.org/Language_design_discussions#Automatic... [2] http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/ARC_in_D_296740.html http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/ARC_in_D...
- pixel_fcker 10y ago
  The slides say the GC never collects, which is the same as having no GC.
p0nce 10y ago
After a while decreasing GC usage in D, I ended up removing it completely. I got reduced memory usage but no speed gain. What I've found is that before you remove the GC, you can turn the overhead from excessive to very affordable with optimizations. Especially today with std.experimental.allocator and -profile=gc

johncolanduoni 10y ago

I'm a fan of Rust, but I think you must be reading a different HN if you don't think the Rust community focuses on comparing it to C and C++. The Go language creators have specifically stated that they created Go to solve problems they had with C and C++: http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/100428.html http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/100428.html

k__ 10y ago
I don't think "focuses on comparing it to C" is the right phrasing, but being a drop-in replacement for C is certainly a killer feature.

shakna 10y ago

Rust has Mozilla, and the community does tend to appear in C/++ threads. Go has Google. Swift & ObjC has Apple. D... Doesn't have a large mindshare/corporation backing it.

systems 10y ago
dont reduce Rust and Go relative success to just having google or mozilla Rust and Go .. made better design choices that made them more popular
- camus2 10y ago
  > dont reduce Rust and Go relative success to just having google or Mozilla I don't think Go would have been popular without Google. It's easier to sell a solution to your manager when it is backed by a big org, and when people are paid fulltime to work on it. Same for Rust and Mozilla. The barrier for adoption of new languages is pretty high today in enterprise space.
  - systems 10y ago
    so why did python and ruby became popular and why isnt dart more popular
    - pcwalton 10y ago
      Python became popular because many people saw it as a cleaned-up Perl, and ESR wrote about it. Ruby became popular because of Rails. Dart isn't popular because it was designed to be a browser language but did little to court Web developers who like JS (contrary to the HN consensus, a lot of Web developers actually like JS) or other browser vendors.
      - systems 10y ago
        so you agree with me, we python and ruby didnt need a huge corporate backing and dart even with some corporate backing didnt become popular more examples that debunk that corporate backing is what made rust or go ... are scala and clojure, scala being way more popular than d and clojure ... and neither have corporate backing in conclusion, you dont really need corporate backing if you have a nicely designed language that have its own path

Ace17 10y ago

Please note that, GC or not GC, you still can have deterministic destruction (e.g RAII).