4 ms·

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 co

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.

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.