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Does anyone know if googles V8 could benefit from being re-written (even partly) in D? I'm mostly a web programmer and only just started learning D, so I'm not

by danford 12y ago

Does anyone know if googles V8 could benefit from being re-written (even partly) in D? I'm mostly a web programmer and only just started learning D, so I'm not real familiar with how these lower level languages work. It seems like C++ programmers openly admit that D is better than C++ in many ways, but because of the lack of documentation (which seems to be a little better as of late) it just isn't a viable solution for most projects. I'd like to hear an unbiased opinion of whether D, assuming the proper docs were available, could replace the C++ code in V8, and if not, what exactly is holding it back?

camus2 12y ago
> what exactly is holding it back? the size and the complexity of V8 codebase.
simendsjo 12y ago
Not answering your question, but there is a research project implementing a Javascript JIT compiler in D: http://pointersgonewild.wordpress.com/higgs/ http://pointersgonewild.wordpress.com/higgs/
nly 12y ago
As far as I've ever seen, Google have no particular interest in D. Facebook have expressed quite a bit of support, but Google just have a way of doing there own thing (Dart, Go, forking WebKit etc). Another problem with Google is that they're fickle, fragmented, and known for crappy support. > It seems like C++ programmers openly admit that D is better than C++ in many ways. Anecdotally, I've not seen this. The vibe I've picked up on over the years seems to be that D is and was always seen as a cleaner, but slightly less powerful, C++ with a lot of potential... but now C++ standardisation has accelerated, there's just much more comfort amongst C++ devs that the language looking forward is good. C++ is almost as old as C and evolving faster than ever. If anything though, Rust seems to be the serious topic of choice atm.
keeperofdakeys 12y ago
As a language, C++ is used in many different niches, because it allows such low-level control of the machine. However it has many problems around the edges, because it was essentially hacked ontop of C. D is designed to get around these problems, and provide a better OOP langauge. So it lacks some low-level control that C++ has, which you require for for a JIT, which is used in V8. So you'd want to stick with C or C++ for something like V8. There are also two other recent languages designed to replace niches of C++: Go in latency-sensitive, real time systems, and Rust in systems programming. Rust is quite interesting though, since it introduces many data-safety concepts from function programming into an imperative language.

by danford 12y ago

camus2 12y ago

> what exactly is holding it back? the size and the complexity of V8 codebase.

simendsjo 12y ago

Not answering your question, but there is a research project implementing a Javascript JIT compiler in D: http://pointersgonewild.wordpress.com/higgs/ http://pointersgonewild.wordpress.com/higgs/

nly 12y ago

As far as I've ever seen, Google have no particular interest in D. Facebook have expressed quite a bit of support, but Google just have a way of doing there own thing (Dart, Go, forking WebKit etc). Another problem with Google is that they're fickle, fragmented, and known for crappy support. > It seems like C++ programmers openly admit that D is better than C++ in many ways. Anecdotally, I've not seen this. The vibe I've picked up on over the years seems to be that D is and was always seen as a cleaner, but slightly less powerful, C++ with a lot of potential... but now C++ standardisation has accelerated, there's just much more comfort amongst C++ devs that the language looking forward is good. C++ is almost as old as C and evolving faster than ever. If anything though, Rust seems to be the serious topic of choice atm.

keeperofdakeys 12y ago

As a language, C++ is used in many different niches, because it allows such low-level control of the machine. However it has many problems around the edges, because it was essentially hacked ontop of C. D is designed to get around these problems, and provide a better OOP langauge. So it lacks some low-level control that C++ has, which you require for for a JIT, which is used in V8. So you'd want to stick with C or C++ for something like V8. There are also two other recent languages designed to replace niches of C++: Go in latency-sensitive, real time systems, and Rust in systems programming. Rust is quite interesting though, since it introduces many data-safety concepts from function programming into an imperative language.