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A top quality, supported, opensource compiler would help. The LLVM front-end looks promising but I half expect it to be abandoned. It's kind of odd, it defin

A top quality, supported, opensource compiler would help. The LLVM front-end looks promising but I half expect it to be abandoned. It's kind of odd, it definitely seems like there is a desire for a compiled machine code producing language to compete with C and C++. I kind of remember this argument with Ada over the years, particularly when the GNAT front-end to GCC was mainlined. Having tools available is a big noticeable percentage of the problem; maybe 30-45%. Tooling is becoming more than just a compiler though, an eclipse IDE for D would be nice too and it's probably required for serious consideration by the masses. Supported and live are important for this stuff. Another aspect of adoption seems to be adoption. It's a snowballing kind of thing. In the GNAT/Ada days there were a lot more advocates of its use than there were users. If you really want D to start getting more attention, then start doing some successful D software, particularly packages that get attention seem to be good (see Mono and Tomboy) Ada has a good complaint compiler that is supported and still doesn't have many users. Some free/open software that shows some of the benefits and advantages of D would help.

steveklabnik 17y ago
Yes. This is actually is one of the main points of contention... that the dmd frontend is 'source available.' The community is doing some things to address this, but that's all I'll say. LDC is a really great project. It's not being abandoned anytime soon, trust me. Those guys are working hard, and they answer bug reports really, really fast. Though I'm admittedly slightly biased, since they use my kernel as a test case. There are several IDEs that support D, though I can't think of them off of the top of my head, since I use vim. Posiedon? There have been several intersting D projects, but you're right, more would certainly help. The blog post I linked to's author wrote a little language called MiniD that's pretty interesting, I (and several others) are writing a kernel, etc... but dsource.org can look like a graveyard sometimes...
- WalterBright 17y ago
  The dmd front end is GPL'd.
  - steveklabnik 17y ago
    Thanks for the correction, Walter. As Wikipedia says: The Digital Mars D compiler is the official D compiler by Walter Bright. The compiler front-end is licensed under both the Artistic License and the GNU GPL; the source code for the front-end is distributed along with the compiler binaries. The compiler back-end source code is available but not under an open source license.

steveklabnik 17y ago

Yes. This is actually is one of the main points of contention... that the dmd frontend is 'source available.' The community is doing some things to address this, but that's all I'll say. LDC is a really great project. It's not being abandoned anytime soon, trust me. Those guys are working hard, and they answer bug reports really, really fast. Though I'm admittedly slightly biased, since they use my kernel as a test case. There are several IDEs that support D, though I can't think of them off of the top of my head, since I use vim. Posiedon? There have been several intersting D projects, but you're right, more would certainly help. The blog post I linked to's author wrote a little language called MiniD that's pretty interesting, I (and several others) are writing a kernel, etc... but dsource.org can look like a graveyard sometimes...

WalterBright 17y ago
The dmd front end is GPL'd.
- steveklabnik 17y ago
  Thanks for the correction, Walter. As Wikipedia says: The Digital Mars D compiler is the official D compiler by Walter Bright. The compiler front-end is licensed under both the Artistic License and the GNU GPL; the source code for the front-end is distributed along with the compiler binaries. The compiler back-end source code is available but not under an open source license.