6 ms·

I feel like back when D might've been a language worth looking into, it was hampered by the proprietary compilers. And still today, the first thought that come

by mort96 1y ago

I feel like back when D might've been a language worth looking into, it was hampered by the proprietary compilers. And still today, the first thought that comes to mind when I think D is "that language with proprietary compilers", even though there has apparently been some movement on that front? Not really worth looking into now that we have Go as an excellent GC'd compiled language and Rust as an excellent C++ replacement. Having two different languages for those purposes seems like a better idea anyway than having one "optionally managed" language. I can't even imagine how that could possibly work in a way that doesn't just fragment the community.

sfpotter 1y ago
Sounds like you should look into it instead of idly speculating! Also, the funny thing about a divisive feature is that it doesn't matter if it fragments the community if you can use it successfully. There are a lot of loud people in the D community who freak out and whine about the GC, and there are plenty more quiet ones who are happily getting things done without making much noise. It's a great language.
- mort96 1y ago
  Are you saying that if I'm using D-without-GC, I can use any D library, including ones written with the assumption that there is a GC? If not, how does it not fracture the community? > There are a lot of loud people in the D community who freak out and whine about the GC, and there are plenty more quiet ones who are happily getting things done without making much noise This sounds like an admission that the community is fractured, except with a weirdly judgemental tone towards those who use D without a GC?
  - MrRadar 1y ago
    > Are you saying that if I'm using D-without-GC, I can use any D library, including ones written with the assumption that there is a GC? If not, how does it not fracture the community? "Are you saying that if I'm using Rust in the Linux kernel, I can use any Rust library, including ones written with the assumption they will be running in userspace? If not, how does that not fracture the community?" "Are you saying that if I'm using C++ in an embedded environment without runtime type information and exceptions, I can use any C++ library, including ones written with the assumption they can use RTTI/exceptions? If not, how does that not fracture the community?" You can make this argument about a lot of languages and particular subsets/restrictions on them that are needed in specific circumstances. If you need to write GC-free code in D you can do it. Yes, it restricts what parts of the library ecosystem you can use, but that's not different from any other langauge that has wide adoption in a wide variety of applications. It turns out that in reality most applications don't need to be GC-free (the massive preponderance of GC languages is indicative of this) and GC makes them much easier and safer to write. I think most people in the D community are tired of people (especially outsiders) constantly rehashing discussions about GC. It was a much more salient topic before the core language supported no-GC mode, but now that it does it's up to individuals to decide what the cost/benefit analysis is for writing GC vs no-GC code (including the availability of third-party libraries in each mode).
    - mort96 1y ago
      The RTTI vs no-RTTI thing and the exceptions vs no-exceptions thing definitely does fracture the C++ community to some degree, and plenty of people have rightly criticized C++ for it. > If you need to write GC-free code in D you can do it. This seems correct, with the emphasis. Plenty of people make it sound like the GC in D is no problem because it's optional, so if you don't want GC you can just write D without a GC. It's a bit like saying that the stdlib in Rust is no problem because you can just use no_std, or that exceptions in C++ is no problem because you can just use -fno-exceptions. All these things are naïve for the same reason; it locks you out of most of the ecosystem.
  - sfpotter 1y ago
    > This sounds like an admission that the community is fractured, except with a weirdly judgemental tone towards those who use D without a GC? That's not what I'm saying, and who cares if it's fractured or not? Why should that influence your decision making? There are people who complain loudly about the GC, and then there are lots of other people who do not complain loudly and also use D in many different interesting ways. Some use the GC, some don't. People get hyper fixated on the GC, but it isn't the only thing going on in the language.
    - mort96 1y ago
      > who cares if it's fractured or not? Why should that influence your decision making? Because, if I want to write code in D without the GC, it impacts me negatively if I can't use most of the libraries created by the community.
      - sfpotter 1y ago
        What domain are you working in? It's hard to be able to say anything specific that might help you if you can't explain a little more clearly what you're working on. I will say there are a larger and larger number of no-GC libraries. Phobos is getting an overhaul which is going to seriously reduce the amount that the GC is used. It is probably also worth reflecting for a moment why the GC is causing problems for you. If you're doing something where you need some hard-ish realtime guarantee, bear in mind that the GC only collects when you allocate. It's also possible to roll your own D runtime. I believe people have done things like replace the GC with allocators. The interface to the GC is not unduly complicated. It may be possible to come up with a creative solution to your problem.
        mort96 1y ago
        I work in many domains, some where a GC is totally no problem, and some where I'd rather not have a GC (such as microcontrollers, games, the occasional kernel code, software running on embedded Linux devices with very limited memory). I'm happy with C++ and Rust for those tasks. For other tasks where I want a GC, I'm perfectly happy with some combination of Go, Python and Typescript. I'm realistically never going to look into D.
- giancarlostoro 1y ago
  Go is a GC language that has eaten a chunk of the industry (Docker, TypeScript, Kubernetes... Minio... and many more I'm sure) and only some people cry about it, but you know who else owns sizable chunks of the industry? Java and C# which are both GC languages. While some people waste hours crying about GCs the rest of us have built the future around it. Hell, all of AI is eaten by Python another GC language.
  - timeinput 1y ago
    I'm not strongly for or against (non-deterministic) GC. Deterministic GC in Rust or the (there's no real Scotsman) correctly written C++ has benefits, but often I don't care and go / java / c# / python are all fine. I think you're really overstepping with AI is eaten by python. I can imagine an AI stack with out python llama.cpp (for inference not training... isn't completely that, but most of the core functionality is not python, and not-GCd at all), I can not imagine an AI stack with out CUDA + C++. Even the premier python tools (pytorch, vllm) would be non-functional with out these tools. While some very common interfaces to AI require a GC'd language I think if you deleted the non-GC parts you'd be completely stuck and have years of digging your self out, but if you deleted the 'GC' parts you can end up with a usable thing in very short order.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      NVidia has decided that the market demand to do everything in Python justifies the development cost of making Python fast in CUDA. Thus now you can use PTX directly from Python, and with the new cu Tiles approach, you can write CUDA kernels in a Python subset. Many of these tools get combined because that is what is already there, and the large majority of us don't want, or has the resources, to spend bootstrapting a whole new world. Until there is some monetary advantage in doing so.
  - mort96 1y ago
    There's a place for GC languages, and there's a place for non-GC languages. I don't understand why you seem so angry towards people who write in non-GC languages.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  Once one realizes that the GC is just another way to allocate memory in D, it becomes quite wonderful to have a diverse collection of memory management facilities at hand. They coexist quite smoothly. Why should programs be all GC or no GC? Why should you have to change languages to switch between them?
  - alphaglosined 1y ago
    Indeed the GC is just a library with some helpful language hooks to make the experience nice. If you understand how it's hooked into, it's very easy to work with. There is only one area of the language related to closure context creation that can be unexpected.
giancarlostoro 1y ago
I don't think the proprietary compilers is a true set back, look at for example C# before it became as open as .NET has become today (MIT licensed!) and yet the industry took it. I think what D needed was what made Ruby mainly relevant: Rails. D needs a community framework that makes it a strong candidate for a specific domain. I honestly think if Walter Bright (or anyone within D) invested in having a serious web framework for D even if its not part of the standard library, it could be worth its weight in gold. Right now there's only Vibe.d that stands out but I have not seen it grow very much since its inception, its very slow moving. Give me a feature rich web framework in D comparable to Django or Rails and all my side projects will shift to D. The real issue is it needs to be batteries included since D does not have dozens of OOTB libraries to fill in gaps with. Look at Go as an example, built-in HTTP server library, production ready, its not ultra fancy but it does the work.
- mort96 1y ago
  C# has Microsoft behind it. D ... doesn't. There are plenty of people who aren't interested in using languages with proprietary toolchains. Those people typically don't use C#. The people who don't mind proprietary toolchains typically write software for an environment where D isn't relevant, such as .NET or the Apple world.
  - neonsunset 1y ago
    [dead]
- Clouudy 1y ago
  I do agree with you that there needs to be a good framework though. Either in Web or Games. Web because it's more familiar than Go but also has Fibers, and Games because it's an easier C++. There is also Inochi2D which looks rather professional: https://inochi2d.com/ https://inochi2d.com/ One of the issues I've seen in the community is just that there aren't enough people in the community with enough interest and enough spare time to spend on a large project. Everyone in the core team is focused on working on the actual language (and day-jobs), while everyone else is doing their own sort of thing. From your profile you seem to have a lot of experience in the field and in software in general, so I'd like to ask you if you have any other advice for getting the language un-stuck, especially with regards to the personnel issues. I think I'd like to take up your proposal for a web framework as well, but I don't really have any knowledge of web programming beyond the basics. Do you have any advice on where to start or what features/use case would be best as well?
schveiguy 1y ago
D has been fully unproprietary since 2017. https://forum.dlang.org/post/oc8acc$1ei9$1@digitalmars.com https://forum.dlang.org/post/oc8acc$1ei9$1@digitalmars.com But that's only the reference compiler, DMD. The other two compilers were fully open source (including gcc, which includes D) before that. Fully disagree on your position that having all possibilities with one language is bad. When you have a nice language, it's nice to write with it for all things.
pjmlp 1y ago
Go would be an excellent GC'd compiled language if it actually learnt from history of computing. I rather give that to languages like C# with Native AOT, or Swift (see chapter 5 of GC Handbook). D only lacks someone like Google to push it into mainstream no matter what, like Go got to benefit from Docker and Kubernetes.

by mort96 1y ago

sfpotter 1y ago

Sounds like you should look into it instead of idly speculating! Also, the funny thing about a divisive feature is that it doesn't matter if it fragments the community if you can use it successfully. There are a lot of loud people in the D community who freak out and whine about the GC, and there are plenty more quiet ones who are happily getting things done without making much noise. It's a great language.

mort96 1y ago
Are you saying that if I'm using D-without-GC, I can use any D library, including ones written with the assumption that there is a GC? If not, how does it not fracture the community? > There are a lot of loud people in the D community who freak out and whine about the GC, and there are plenty more quiet ones who are happily getting things done without making much noise This sounds like an admission that the community is fractured, except with a weirdly judgemental tone towards those who use D without a GC?
- MrRadar 1y ago
  > Are you saying that if I'm using D-without-GC, I can use any D library, including ones written with the assumption that there is a GC? If not, how does it not fracture the community? "Are you saying that if I'm using Rust in the Linux kernel, I can use any Rust library, including ones written with the assumption they will be running in userspace? If not, how does that not fracture the community?" "Are you saying that if I'm using C++ in an embedded environment without runtime type information and exceptions, I can use any C++ library, including ones written with the assumption they can use RTTI/exceptions? If not, how does that not fracture the community?" You can make this argument about a lot of languages and particular subsets/restrictions on them that are needed in specific circumstances. If you need to write GC-free code in D you can do it. Yes, it restricts what parts of the library ecosystem you can use, but that's not different from any other langauge that has wide adoption in a wide variety of applications. It turns out that in reality most applications don't need to be GC-free (the massive preponderance of GC languages is indicative of this) and GC makes them much easier and safer to write. I think most people in the D community are tired of people (especially outsiders) constantly rehashing discussions about GC. It was a much more salient topic before the core language supported no-GC mode, but now that it does it's up to individuals to decide what the cost/benefit analysis is for writing GC vs no-GC code (including the availability of third-party libraries in each mode).
  - mort96 1y ago
    The RTTI vs no-RTTI thing and the exceptions vs no-exceptions thing definitely does fracture the C++ community to some degree, and plenty of people have rightly criticized C++ for it. > If you need to write GC-free code in D you can do it. This seems correct, with the emphasis. Plenty of people make it sound like the GC in D is no problem because it's optional, so if you don't want GC you can just write D without a GC. It's a bit like saying that the stdlib in Rust is no problem because you can just use no_std, or that exceptions in C++ is no problem because you can just use -fno-exceptions. All these things are naïve for the same reason; it locks you out of most of the ecosystem.
- sfpotter 1y ago
  > This sounds like an admission that the community is fractured, except with a weirdly judgemental tone towards those who use D without a GC? That's not what I'm saying, and who cares if it's fractured or not? Why should that influence your decision making? There are people who complain loudly about the GC, and then there are lots of other people who do not complain loudly and also use D in many different interesting ways. Some use the GC, some don't. People get hyper fixated on the GC, but it isn't the only thing going on in the language.
  - mort96 1y ago
    > who cares if it's fractured or not? Why should that influence your decision making? Because, if I want to write code in D without the GC, it impacts me negatively if I can't use most of the libraries created by the community.
    - sfpotter 1y ago
      What domain are you working in? It's hard to be able to say anything specific that might help you if you can't explain a little more clearly what you're working on. I will say there are a larger and larger number of no-GC libraries. Phobos is getting an overhaul which is going to seriously reduce the amount that the GC is used. It is probably also worth reflecting for a moment why the GC is causing problems for you. If you're doing something where you need some hard-ish realtime guarantee, bear in mind that the GC only collects when you allocate. It's also possible to roll your own D runtime. I believe people have done things like replace the GC with allocators. The interface to the GC is not unduly complicated. It may be possible to come up with a creative solution to your problem.
      - mort96 1y ago
        I work in many domains, some where a GC is totally no problem, and some where I'd rather not have a GC (such as microcontrollers, games, the occasional kernel code, software running on embedded Linux devices with very limited memory). I'm happy with C++ and Rust for those tasks. For other tasks where I want a GC, I'm perfectly happy with some combination of Go, Python and Typescript. I'm realistically never going to look into D.
giancarlostoro 1y ago
Go is a GC language that has eaten a chunk of the industry (Docker, TypeScript, Kubernetes... Minio... and many more I'm sure) and only some people cry about it, but you know who else owns sizable chunks of the industry? Java and C# which are both GC languages. While some people waste hours crying about GCs the rest of us have built the future around it. Hell, all of AI is eaten by Python another GC language.
- timeinput 1y ago
  I'm not strongly for or against (non-deterministic) GC. Deterministic GC in Rust or the (there's no real Scotsman) correctly written C++ has benefits, but often I don't care and go / java / c# / python are all fine. I think you're really overstepping with AI is eaten by python. I can imagine an AI stack with out python llama.cpp (for inference not training... isn't completely that, but most of the core functionality is not python, and not-GCd at all), I can not imagine an AI stack with out CUDA + C++. Even the premier python tools (pytorch, vllm) would be non-functional with out these tools. While some very common interfaces to AI require a GC'd language I think if you deleted the non-GC parts you'd be completely stuck and have years of digging your self out, but if you deleted the 'GC' parts you can end up with a usable thing in very short order.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    NVidia has decided that the market demand to do everything in Python justifies the development cost of making Python fast in CUDA. Thus now you can use PTX directly from Python, and with the new cu Tiles approach, you can write CUDA kernels in a Python subset. Many of these tools get combined because that is what is already there, and the large majority of us don't want, or has the resources, to spend bootstrapting a whole new world. Until there is some monetary advantage in doing so.
- mort96 1y ago
  There's a place for GC languages, and there's a place for non-GC languages. I don't understand why you seem so angry towards people who write in non-GC languages.
WalterBright 1y ago
Once one realizes that the GC is just another way to allocate memory in D, it becomes quite wonderful to have a diverse collection of memory management facilities at hand. They coexist quite smoothly. Why should programs be all GC or no GC? Why should you have to change languages to switch between them?
- alphaglosined 1y ago
  Indeed the GC is just a library with some helpful language hooks to make the experience nice. If you understand how it's hooked into, it's very easy to work with. There is only one area of the language related to closure context creation that can be unexpected.

giancarlostoro 1y ago

I don't think the proprietary compilers is a true set back, look at for example C# before it became as open as .NET has become today (MIT licensed!) and yet the industry took it. I think what D needed was what made Ruby mainly relevant: Rails. D needs a community framework that makes it a strong candidate for a specific domain. I honestly think if Walter Bright (or anyone within D) invested in having a serious web framework for D even if its not part of the standard library, it could be worth its weight in gold. Right now there's only Vibe.d that stands out but I have not seen it grow very much since its inception, its very slow moving. Give me a feature rich web framework in D comparable to Django or Rails and all my side projects will shift to D. The real issue is it needs to be batteries included since D does not have dozens of OOTB libraries to fill in gaps with. Look at Go as an example, built-in HTTP server library, production ready, its not ultra fancy but it does the work.

mort96 1y ago
C# has Microsoft behind it. D ... doesn't. There are plenty of people who aren't interested in using languages with proprietary toolchains. Those people typically don't use C#. The people who don't mind proprietary toolchains typically write software for an environment where D isn't relevant, such as .NET or the Apple world.
- neonsunset 1y ago
  [dead]
Clouudy 1y ago
I do agree with you that there needs to be a good framework though. Either in Web or Games. Web because it's more familiar than Go but also has Fibers, and Games because it's an easier C++. There is also Inochi2D which looks rather professional: https://inochi2d.com/ https://inochi2d.com/ One of the issues I've seen in the community is just that there aren't enough people in the community with enough interest and enough spare time to spend on a large project. Everyone in the core team is focused on working on the actual language (and day-jobs), while everyone else is doing their own sort of thing. From your profile you seem to have a lot of experience in the field and in software in general, so I'd like to ask you if you have any other advice for getting the language un-stuck, especially with regards to the personnel issues. I think I'd like to take up your proposal for a web framework as well, but I don't really have any knowledge of web programming beyond the basics. Do you have any advice on where to start or what features/use case would be best as well?

schveiguy 1y ago

D has been fully unproprietary since 2017. https://forum.dlang.org/post/oc8acc$1ei9$1@digitalmars.com https://forum.dlang.org/post/oc8acc$1ei9$1@digitalmars.com But that's only the reference compiler, DMD. The other two compilers were fully open source (including gcc, which includes D) before that. Fully disagree on your position that having all possibilities with one language is bad. When you have a nice language, it's nice to write with it for all things.

pjmlp 1y ago

Go would be an excellent GC'd compiled language if it actually learnt from history of computing. I rather give that to languages like C# with Native AOT, or Swift (see chapter 5 of GC Handbook). D only lacks someone like Google to push it into mainstream no matter what, like Go got to benefit from Docker and Kubernetes.