4 ms·

I'm a little confused. I've heard of Digital Mars around the internet but I don't know what it is or why the company was started. For my entire life as a Softw

I'm a little confused. I've heard of Digital Mars around the internet but I don't know what it is or why the company was started. For my entire life as a Software Engineer the idea of a close sourced or proprietary compiler was just alien to me. What set you down the path of writing compilers? Did anyone buy licenses to your compilers? Why was D started? A more technical question: Was there any abstraction/pattern that has been deeply rooted into your code base that you are unable to change due to prevalence yet this pattern/abstraction makes it more difficult to maintain your code base? In any other words: have there been any mistakes made?

WalterBright 8y ago
digitalmars.com ! When I started, everything was closed source. Open source was inconceivable. I started writing compilers in order to speed up my game Empire (www.classicempire.com). Compilers turned out to be more interesting :-) Yes, many bought licenses. D was started because I got bored with retirement (6 weeks of watching TV will do that do you). My ideas for improving C++ met with enormous resistance. So I did my own language. Ironically, D features have steadily been adopted by C++. > have there been any mistakes made? Haha, I could spend months responding to that! Probably the worst abstraction in the DMC code base is the use of linked lists. They're slow, cache-unfriendly, and leaky. I learned my lesson with DMD, which uses adjustable arrays instead. I've tried encapsulating the lists, like CodeBuilder in the back end, but it's a LOT of work to get that in. It wouldn't have been so much work if the list abstraction didn't leak the structure of the list at every opportunity.
- krylon 8y ago
  > I started writing compilers in order to speed up my game Empire (www.classicempire.com). Compilers turned out to be more interesting :-) That seems to be a recurring pattern in the history of software. Unix was created for similar reasons (to create a self-hosted development environment for game), and the Linux kernel started out as a terminal emulator.
- glandium 8y ago
  > D was started because I got bored with retirement (6 weeks of watching TV will do that do you). Waw, you retired "young".
- fetbaffe 8y ago
  Thank you for Empire, Walter! One of the best turn-based strategy computer games ever created. Many hours of fun.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    > One of the best turn-based strategy computer games ever created. Who'd have thought that would ever happen? I wrote it simply because it was the game I wanted to play.

WalterBright 8y ago

digitalmars.com ! When I started, everything was closed source. Open source was inconceivable. I started writing compilers in order to speed up my game Empire (www.classicempire.com). Compilers turned out to be more interesting :-) Yes, many bought licenses. D was started because I got bored with retirement (6 weeks of watching TV will do that do you). My ideas for improving C++ met with enormous resistance. So I did my own language. Ironically, D features have steadily been adopted by C++. > have there been any mistakes made? Haha, I could spend months responding to that! Probably the worst abstraction in the DMC code base is the use of linked lists. They're slow, cache-unfriendly, and leaky. I learned my lesson with DMD, which uses adjustable arrays instead. I've tried encapsulating the lists, like CodeBuilder in the back end, but it's a LOT of work to get that in. It wouldn't have been so much work if the list abstraction didn't leak the structure of the list at every opportunity.

krylon 8y ago
> I started writing compilers in order to speed up my game Empire (www.classicempire.com). Compilers turned out to be more interesting :-) That seems to be a recurring pattern in the history of software. Unix was created for similar reasons (to create a self-hosted development environment for game), and the Linux kernel started out as a terminal emulator.
glandium 8y ago
> D was started because I got bored with retirement (6 weeks of watching TV will do that do you). Waw, you retired "young".
fetbaffe 8y ago
Thank you for Empire, Walter! One of the best turn-based strategy computer games ever created. Many hours of fun.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  > One of the best turn-based strategy computer games ever created. Who'd have thought that would ever happen? I wrote it simply because it was the game I wanted to play.