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The De facto super set of D code will always be D. DasBetterC is mainly a thing to use if you really need it, and the ImportC work is supposed to import C. If

by mhh__ 6y ago

The De facto super set of D code will always be D. DasBetterC is mainly a thing to use if you really need it, and the ImportC work is supposed to import C. If you want to see data science done in D take a look at the Mir libraries for example. Symmetry Investments have their own DSL which has a bunch of stuff in it for data wrangling. It's closed source (I have no insider knowledge here so potentially for good), but uses lots of things D makes extremely easy (like talking to other languages) to pull in data from all over the place - like compiling C++ using Cling called from D. D is lacking libraries but makes writing them much more tractable than other languages, this is a shame.

cleberz 6y ago
> The De facto super set of D code will always be D. Well, I'd like to make it clear that creating a "de facto super set of D" is not my objective, anyway. But I'd like to say that, although compiled languages are nice and D is really amazing, I don't even dream of using D to create some quick-and-dirty scripts, the same way I don't even dream of using Til to create shell scripts (I never met any general-purpose language that served as a nice shell, Tcl being the closest one, but still - it's not a traditional shell and the experience is only tolerable, IMHO). Furthermore, it's also not my objective with Til, but I believe, anyway, that a nice scripting language on top of D would prove very beneficial to the language - it's interesting to try it, right? At least to see what happens...
- mhh__ 6y ago
  I'm not sold. Why do I want a scripting language to glue together that is designed to be good a glueing things together? It's a common misconception that programming languages are either fast or expressive - D is both. The rub is probably that you need to know more about programming in the sense that you have to have good aesthetic taste but also a knowledge of what makes programs actually fast to achieve both. And besides, what is a script? Code. If you're really only going to use a file once, then I guess do what ever you want but most "scripts" end up being programs.
  - cleberz 6y ago
    You are entitled to your opinion, sir. Have a nice day.
  - na85 6y ago
    >Why do I want a scripting language to glue together that is designed to be good a glueing things together? A good example might be calling legacy libraries like BLAS and LAPACK. These are battle-tested libraries that represent probably hundreds of millions of dollars of developer time, but Fortran is annoying for IO-heavy tasks (at least in my opinion). I like that I can spin up a scripting language like python and call into LAPACK for performance and correctness, but still have modern and ergonomic networking or what have you.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      Again, D is designed to make calling into C code easy within the same program you were working on. The idea that you can't have a language that is both expressive and fast is just Stockholm syndrome from C++ being unergonomic. Check it out on the website, you can write an RPN calculator in D in less lines than a Haskell implementation last time I checked, all while checked to be pure by the compiler. Not only would a scripting language be slower because the compiler would be a hack without access to LTO and not have a proper type system etc., It would he a complete waste of time.
WalterBright 6y ago
To clarify a bit on the difference between DasBetterC and ImportC: DasBetterC is what its name suggests, it's for C lovers who enjoy programming in C, but: 1. are sick and tired of buffer overflows 2. want to do metaprogramming but realize that metaprogramming with the C preprocessor is barbaric 3. want modules and struct member functions 4. don't want a runtime other than the C standard library ImportC is a straight up ISO C11 compiler. It's not for programming in (although you can do it easily enough), it's so D can directly access your existing C code, without having to tediously translate it to D. To that end, ImportC doesn't warn about execrable coding practice, the error messages are utilitarian, and has no extra features. If ISO C11 says it's ok, ImportC stamps it with approval.
teleforce 6y ago
The question is why not? If creating a superset languages based on D will encourage more people to use D either directly or indirectly me think it's really worth it. Please check Terra language (now in beta), on how they created Lua like language to enable easier optimization in C++ and other languages [1]. They reported Terra-based autotuner for BLAS routines performs within 20% of ATLAS, and DSL for stencil computations that runs 2.3x faster than hand-written C [2]. According to D language origins paper, D is meant to be general-purpose programming language with support for procedural, object-oriented, generic, generative, and functional programming [3]. It'll be a shame not to fully utilize the powerful nature of D. In addition, D also supports D language compiler DMD as a library [4], and there's also libDSL, a library for developing embedded domain specific languages in D via template metaprogramming [5]. [1]https://terralang.org/ https://terralang.org/ [2]https://terralang.org/pldi071-devito.pdf https://terralang.org/pldi071-devito.pdf [3]https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3386323 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3386323 [4]https://dlang.org/blog/2017/08/01/a-dub-case-study-compiling-dmd-as-a-library/ https://dlang.org/blog/2017/08/01/a-dub-case-study-compiling... [5]https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2658761.2658770 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2658761.2658770
- mhh__ 6y ago
  dmd as a library does not give you access to the compilers backend as of today. The whole point in D is to write the program in D or write the DSL directly into a D file. If I can be blunt here, why not? Because it would be crap. It's like sprinting in Wellies, by using a scripting language you either create an absolute Herculean task to wrap everything properly or immediately lose all the powerful things D let's you do.
  - cleberz 6y ago
    Well, "wrap everything" is not really a concern (phew!) and I can't see how would anyone "lose all the powerful things D let's you do" with D being the language you'll write most of the code, anyway. But maybe you're right about writing everything always in D!!! It's, hands down, the final answer to everything anyone would want, isn't? I wonder if there is some way of warning people who write software in Javascript, PHP, Ruby, Python, Perl, Erlang, Elixir, Tcl and all those other clearly inferior languages about that... I'm pretty sure they'll switch to D right away!!!!1! (Just kidding: I'm writing Til because I want to and nothing more.)

by mhh__ 6y ago

cleberz 6y ago

> The De facto super set of D code will always be D. Well, I'd like to make it clear that creating a "de facto super set of D" is not my objective, anyway. But I'd like to say that, although compiled languages are nice and D is really amazing, I don't even dream of using D to create some quick-and-dirty scripts, the same way I don't even dream of using Til to create shell scripts (I never met any general-purpose language that served as a nice shell, Tcl being the closest one, but still - it's not a traditional shell and the experience is only tolerable, IMHO). Furthermore, it's also not my objective with Til, but I believe, anyway, that a nice scripting language on top of D would prove very beneficial to the language - it's interesting to try it, right? At least to see what happens...

mhh__ 6y ago
I'm not sold. Why do I want a scripting language to glue together that is designed to be good a glueing things together? It's a common misconception that programming languages are either fast or expressive - D is both. The rub is probably that you need to know more about programming in the sense that you have to have good aesthetic taste but also a knowledge of what makes programs actually fast to achieve both. And besides, what is a script? Code. If you're really only going to use a file once, then I guess do what ever you want but most "scripts" end up being programs.
- cleberz 6y ago
  You are entitled to your opinion, sir. Have a nice day.
- na85 6y ago
  >Why do I want a scripting language to glue together that is designed to be good a glueing things together? A good example might be calling legacy libraries like BLAS and LAPACK. These are battle-tested libraries that represent probably hundreds of millions of dollars of developer time, but Fortran is annoying for IO-heavy tasks (at least in my opinion). I like that I can spin up a scripting language like python and call into LAPACK for performance and correctness, but still have modern and ergonomic networking or what have you.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    Again, D is designed to make calling into C code easy within the same program you were working on. The idea that you can't have a language that is both expressive and fast is just Stockholm syndrome from C++ being unergonomic. Check it out on the website, you can write an RPN calculator in D in less lines than a Haskell implementation last time I checked, all while checked to be pure by the compiler. Not only would a scripting language be slower because the compiler would be a hack without access to LTO and not have a proper type system etc., It would he a complete waste of time.

WalterBright 6y ago

To clarify a bit on the difference between DasBetterC and ImportC: DasBetterC is what its name suggests, it's for C lovers who enjoy programming in C, but: 1. are sick and tired of buffer overflows 2. want to do metaprogramming but realize that metaprogramming with the C preprocessor is barbaric 3. want modules and struct member functions 4. don't want a runtime other than the C standard library ImportC is a straight up ISO C11 compiler. It's not for programming in (although you can do it easily enough), it's so D can directly access your existing C code, without having to tediously translate it to D. To that end, ImportC doesn't warn about execrable coding practice, the error messages are utilitarian, and has no extra features. If ISO C11 says it's ok, ImportC stamps it with approval.

teleforce 6y ago

The question is why not? If creating a superset languages based on D will encourage more people to use D either directly or indirectly me think it's really worth it. Please check Terra language (now in beta), on how they created Lua like language to enable easier optimization in C++ and other languages [1]. They reported Terra-based autotuner for BLAS routines performs within 20% of ATLAS, and DSL for stencil computations that runs 2.3x faster than hand-written C [2]. According to D language origins paper, D is meant to be general-purpose programming language with support for procedural, object-oriented, generic, generative, and functional programming [3]. It'll be a shame not to fully utilize the powerful nature of D. In addition, D also supports D language compiler DMD as a library [4], and there's also libDSL, a library for developing embedded domain specific languages in D via template metaprogramming [5]. [1]https://terralang.org/ https://terralang.org/ [2]https://terralang.org/pldi071-devito.pdf https://terralang.org/pldi071-devito.pdf [3]https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3386323 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3386323 [4]https://dlang.org/blog/2017/08/01/a-dub-case-study-compiling-dmd-as-a-library/ https://dlang.org/blog/2017/08/01/a-dub-case-study-compiling... [5]https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2658761.2658770 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2658761.2658770

mhh__ 6y ago
dmd as a library does not give you access to the compilers backend as of today. The whole point in D is to write the program in D or write the DSL directly into a D file. If I can be blunt here, why not? Because it would be crap. It's like sprinting in Wellies, by using a scripting language you either create an absolute Herculean task to wrap everything properly or immediately lose all the powerful things D let's you do.
- cleberz 6y ago
  Well, "wrap everything" is not really a concern (phew!) and I can't see how would anyone "lose all the powerful things D let's you do" with D being the language you'll write most of the code, anyway. But maybe you're right about writing everything always in D!!! It's, hands down, the final answer to everything anyone would want, isn't? I wonder if there is some way of warning people who write software in Javascript, PHP, Ruby, Python, Perl, Erlang, Elixir, Tcl and all those other clearly inferior languages about that... I'm pretty sure they'll switch to D right away!!!!1! (Just kidding: I'm writing Til because I want to and nothing more.)