3 ms·

what do people mean by 'a fast Python' in this context, when the language syntax and features look nothing like Python?

• vram22 9y ago
  Walter and others who know D much better can answer better, but I'll add my 2c, based on what I've read and some use I've done of D: - The Wikipedia article about D says that Python was one of the languages that influenced it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(programming_language) - After programming in D for a while, I noticed that a) it felt comfortable to program in it, and b) that it did feel a bit like Python, in the sense that, once you've learned some of the basic features [1] and are writing small but non-trivial programs, the language does not seem to get much in your way, as they say. Also there are a few things where its library functions are a bit like Python, like using File(filename) to open a file and get a File object to operate on. Not exactly similar syntax (though there may be some of that too, if you overlook the superficial things like braces instead of indentation to delimit blocks of code), but more of a "feel" - maybe it is the way some of the functions are designed, at a somewhat higher level of abstraction than C. Also, both Python and D were influenced by C. Incidentally, Python seems to have both influenced and been influenced by many languages (14 and 11 respectively): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language) [1] I've not tried many of the advanced language features yet (and D has many language features, including some relatively advanced ones), but I found it somewhat easy to grasp even basic use of function templates. But you can do a lot even with the basic language features and standard library.