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Noice! Reading through the release notes leaves a feeling of D being a mature language long enough. If you're looking for magnitutes faster scripting alternati

Noice! Reading through the release notes leaves a feeling of D being a mature language long enough. If you're looking for magnitutes faster scripting alternative to Python like once me, take a peek!

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
I'll read through the article but is D really like python in any way? functionals, closures, comprehensions, decorators etc.?
- tastyminerals2 6y ago
  Anonymous lambdas instead of comprehensions, delegates instead of closures. D does not have decorators in the sense Python does, well function attributes might come close. What I do enjoy in D syntax-wise is UFCS: https://tour.dlang.org/tour/en/gems/uniform-function-call-syntax-ufcs https://tour.dlang.org/tour/en/gems/uniform-function-call-sy... Array slicing, ranges, compile-time execution. Probably the most succinct and easy-to-read syntax out of many compiled languages. It's an investment (as with any other language) but the learning curve is not steep if you get scared away by C++ or Rust for that matter. Julia comes to mind too in terms of syntax but no UFCS and its interoperability with C++/C looks like a lot of work compared to D.
  - ttymck 6y ago
    UFCS is awesome, I had no idea it existed! Implicit classes are my favorite feature of scala[1], I agree .chain syntax is infinitely more readable. [1] https://riptutorial.com/scala/example/7538/implicit-classes https://riptutorial.com/scala/example/7538/implicit-classes
    - tastyminerals2 6y ago
      Unlike in Scala, you can chain your custom methods in D. For example, seqOfChars.map!(a => a.toLower).filterIfNotDigitChar.sort.uniq; is simply not possible in Scala. Here is a great presentation about fp in D: http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/stuff/FunctionalD.pdf http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/stuff/FunctionalD.pdf
      - rbonvall 6y ago
        It is possible in Scala: https://scastie.scala-lang.org/k7bHR6EWS7qXvaC8gIj3VA https://scastie.scala-lang.org/k7bHR6EWS7qXvaC8gIj3VA (Unless you mean something different).
        tastyminerals2 6y ago
        True. I forgot about implicits (because I try not to use them :). Unfortunately it looks more like a kludge tbo. Sort and uniq get also hidden in a class which can be tucked away from your eyes and this is never good.
      - qznc 6y ago
        Thanks for calling my presentation "great". I don't design my slides to work without me talking though. The official tour has a short page about FP as well: https://tour.dlang.org/tour/en/gems/functional-programming https://tour.dlang.org/tour/en/gems/functional-programming Anyways, since Walter is probably reading this: Any new insights around this quote five years later? > I know a lot of the programming community is sold on exclusive constraints (C++ concepts, Rust traits) rather than inclusive ones (D constraints). What I don't see is a lot of experience actually using them long term. They may not turn out so well. –Walter Bright
  - hellofunk 6y ago
    It would seem that D and Nim have many similar goals and features.
    - tastyminerals2 6y ago
      Yes, they are frequently compared. If you like style-insensitive (case insensitivity, underscore ignored) languages with hacker mentality, Nim is for you. This is simply a no-go for me. I briefly tried Nim before even knowing about D and it never stuck with me due to awkward syntax (subjective). Later I learnt that Nim (being a younger language) frequently breaks backward compatibility. Maybe it changed now but all the above was enough to pass it and move on.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        What I dislike is the {. .} annotations, Active Oberon also followed that path and I don't find it that great.
        throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
        Some context would be nice - can you say a little more on that annotation please.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        That is how Nim does pragmas, https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#pragmas https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#pragmas And Active Oberon as well (here called flags), http://cas.inf.ethz.ch/projects/a2/repository/raw/trunk/LanguageReport/OberonLanguageReport.pdf http://cas.inf.ethz.ch/projects/a2/repository/raw/trunk/Lang...
- bachmeier 6y ago
  The way to interpret that statement IMO is that D is a good alternative to using a scripting language. I use it that way all the time - it's almost completely replaced Ruby, which was my previous scripting language of choice.
macleginn 6y ago
What about the standard library?
- qznc 6y ago
  Not as comprehensive as Python. However, you can write scripts which pull in packages from the internet called "single-file packages": https://dub.pm/advanced_usage https://dub.pm/advanced_usage Just tried it myself for the first time: #!/usr/bin/env dub /+ dub.sdl: name "hello" dependency "requests" version="1.1.5" +/ import std.stdio : writeln; import requests : postContent; void main() { auto content = postContent("http://httpbin.org/post", ["name": "any name", "age": "42"]); writeln(content); } On Linux, put this into a file, chmod +x it, and execute. The first time it will take a while (downloading and compiling packages). After that on my crappy laptop it takes: 0.66user 0.06system 0:01.25elapsed 57%CPU That is a lot more convenient than venv in Python.
badsectoracula 6y ago
> D being a mature language long enough. I do not follow D closely, but i get the impression that the language breaks backwards compatibility every now and then - i remember some posts here or Reddit some months ago by someone complaining that Walter Bright introduced some changes to the language that broke existing code. IMO a mature language is a language that you can depend on for your existing code to keep working in a timespan of decades - like C and C++ for example. A language that willingly breaks backwards compatibility is a toy, not something to be taken seriously for long term work.
- qznc 6y ago
  The Wikipedia page history section [0] talks about stability. The most relevant part is this: > The release of Andrei Alexandrescu's book The D Programming Language on June 12, 2010, marked the stabilization of D2, which today is commonly referred to as just "D". In other words, D is backwards compatible for 10 years now. At least, I don't know any breaks and the little code I have in D never broke. The transition from D1 to D2 did break backwards compatibility in 2007. The change is comparable to the Python2 to Python3 transition but in a much smaller community. Outdated news from that time still pop up sometimes. Maybe you heard something related to that? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(programming_language)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(programming_language)#Histo...
  - Zardoz84 6y ago
    I have code that I wrote on D like in early 2010's, and keeps working with very minor changes.
  - badsectoracula 6y ago
    So basically if i write some D code now it'll keep working (assuming no OS ABI changes) and compiling in 20 years from today? I'm ok with very minor changes due to compiler bugs or whatever. I wonder what that complain was about then.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Then I guess C and C++ are toys as well, given there are a couple of breaking changes. K&R C, gets, Annex K, VLA, gone by now in C17. gets, exception specifications, external templates, std::auto_ptr now gone, RVO semantics changed, and a couple of other minor semantic changes by C++20.

Noice! Reading through the release notes leaves a feeling of D being a mature language long enough. If you're looking for magnitutes faster scripting alternative to Python like once me, take a peek!

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago

I'll read through the article but is D really like python in any way? functionals, closures, comprehensions, decorators etc.?

tastyminerals2 6y ago
Anonymous lambdas instead of comprehensions, delegates instead of closures. D does not have decorators in the sense Python does, well function attributes might come close. What I do enjoy in D syntax-wise is UFCS: https://tour.dlang.org/tour/en/gems/uniform-function-call-syntax-ufcs https://tour.dlang.org/tour/en/gems/uniform-function-call-sy... Array slicing, ranges, compile-time execution. Probably the most succinct and easy-to-read syntax out of many compiled languages. It's an investment (as with any other language) but the learning curve is not steep if you get scared away by C++ or Rust for that matter. Julia comes to mind too in terms of syntax but no UFCS and its interoperability with C++/C looks like a lot of work compared to D.
- ttymck 6y ago
  UFCS is awesome, I had no idea it existed! Implicit classes are my favorite feature of scala[1], I agree .chain syntax is infinitely more readable. [1] https://riptutorial.com/scala/example/7538/implicit-classes https://riptutorial.com/scala/example/7538/implicit-classes
  - tastyminerals2 6y ago
    Unlike in Scala, you can chain your custom methods in D. For example, seqOfChars.map!(a => a.toLower).filterIfNotDigitChar.sort.uniq; is simply not possible in Scala. Here is a great presentation about fp in D: http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/stuff/FunctionalD.pdf http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/stuff/FunctionalD.pdf
    - rbonvall 6y ago
      It is possible in Scala: https://scastie.scala-lang.org/k7bHR6EWS7qXvaC8gIj3VA https://scastie.scala-lang.org/k7bHR6EWS7qXvaC8gIj3VA (Unless you mean something different).
      - tastyminerals2 6y ago
        True. I forgot about implicits (because I try not to use them :). Unfortunately it looks more like a kludge tbo. Sort and uniq get also hidden in a class which can be tucked away from your eyes and this is never good.
    - qznc 6y ago
      Thanks for calling my presentation "great". I don't design my slides to work without me talking though. The official tour has a short page about FP as well: https://tour.dlang.org/tour/en/gems/functional-programming https://tour.dlang.org/tour/en/gems/functional-programming Anyways, since Walter is probably reading this: Any new insights around this quote five years later? > I know a lot of the programming community is sold on exclusive constraints (C++ concepts, Rust traits) rather than inclusive ones (D constraints). What I don't see is a lot of experience actually using them long term. They may not turn out so well. –Walter Bright
- hellofunk 6y ago
  It would seem that D and Nim have many similar goals and features.
  - tastyminerals2 6y ago
    Yes, they are frequently compared. If you like style-insensitive (case insensitivity, underscore ignored) languages with hacker mentality, Nim is for you. This is simply a no-go for me. I briefly tried Nim before even knowing about D and it never stuck with me due to awkward syntax (subjective). Later I learnt that Nim (being a younger language) frequently breaks backward compatibility. Maybe it changed now but all the above was enough to pass it and move on.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      What I dislike is the {. .} annotations, Active Oberon also followed that path and I don't find it that great.
      - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
        Some context would be nice - can you say a little more on that annotation please.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        That is how Nim does pragmas, https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#pragmas https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#pragmas And Active Oberon as well (here called flags), http://cas.inf.ethz.ch/projects/a2/repository/raw/trunk/LanguageReport/OberonLanguageReport.pdf http://cas.inf.ethz.ch/projects/a2/repository/raw/trunk/Lang...
bachmeier 6y ago
The way to interpret that statement IMO is that D is a good alternative to using a scripting language. I use it that way all the time - it's almost completely replaced Ruby, which was my previous scripting language of choice.

macleginn 6y ago

What about the standard library?

qznc 6y ago
Not as comprehensive as Python. However, you can write scripts which pull in packages from the internet called "single-file packages": https://dub.pm/advanced_usage https://dub.pm/advanced_usage Just tried it myself for the first time: #!/usr/bin/env dub /+ dub.sdl: name "hello" dependency "requests" version="1.1.5" +/ import std.stdio : writeln; import requests : postContent; void main() { auto content = postContent("http://httpbin.org/post", ["name": "any name", "age": "42"]); writeln(content); } On Linux, put this into a file, chmod +x it, and execute. The first time it will take a while (downloading and compiling packages). After that on my crappy laptop it takes: 0.66user 0.06system 0:01.25elapsed 57%CPU That is a lot more convenient than venv in Python.

badsectoracula 6y ago

> D being a mature language long enough. I do not follow D closely, but i get the impression that the language breaks backwards compatibility every now and then - i remember some posts here or Reddit some months ago by someone complaining that Walter Bright introduced some changes to the language that broke existing code. IMO a mature language is a language that you can depend on for your existing code to keep working in a timespan of decades - like C and C++ for example. A language that willingly breaks backwards compatibility is a toy, not something to be taken seriously for long term work.

qznc 6y ago
The Wikipedia page history section [0] talks about stability. The most relevant part is this: > The release of Andrei Alexandrescu's book The D Programming Language on June 12, 2010, marked the stabilization of D2, which today is commonly referred to as just "D". In other words, D is backwards compatible for 10 years now. At least, I don't know any breaks and the little code I have in D never broke. The transition from D1 to D2 did break backwards compatibility in 2007. The change is comparable to the Python2 to Python3 transition but in a much smaller community. Outdated news from that time still pop up sometimes. Maybe you heard something related to that? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(programming_language)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(programming_language)#Histo...
- Zardoz84 6y ago
  I have code that I wrote on D like in early 2010's, and keeps working with very minor changes.
- badsectoracula 6y ago
  So basically if i write some D code now it'll keep working (assuming no OS ABI changes) and compiling in 20 years from today? I'm ok with very minor changes due to compiler bugs or whatever. I wonder what that complain was about then.
pjmlp 6y ago
Then I guess C and C++ are toys as well, given there are a couple of breaking changes. K&R C, gets, Annex K, VLA, gone by now in C17. gets, exception specifications, external templates, std::auto_ptr now gone, RVO semantics changed, and a couple of other minor semantic changes by C++20.