Re: What programming language for Future


"Walter Bright" <walter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:N6CdnadWT5HA7kPenZ2dnUVZ_tadnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> "cr88192" <cr88192@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:c0ad5$43dd3876$ca83b2b2$3205@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> afaik there are not exactly an abounding number of projects written in it
>> at present (as is the case even with java), so it seems unlikely at this
>> point.
>
> D is a pretty young language. I suppose it depends if you're a leader or a
> follower.
>
yeah, but determining how likely it is to "catch on" takes more time to
determine. of course, by my reasoning, one can't know until it allrady has,
but one can make a guess...

>> a quick look doesn't show much particularly interesting to me personally
>> (my present bias being for something I can use in a vm, with dynamic
>> types, but otherwise a lot closer to conventional languages...).
>
> I've never understood the point of a vm. Dynamic typing has its uses.
>
not needing to recompile the app, which for whatever reason may be
problematic or impossible for the person writing in the language (say some
app is being tweaked by an end user).

even with open source apps, getting the damn thing to recompile can be a
problem sometimes. if you have the binary (on an os where binaries typically
work well, eg, windows), one can edit some text files and go (ok, maybe
calling a tool, or maybe not).

or what if you need to recompile things as the app is running?...

all this is not really possible with static compilation.

>> things like c's crappy array handling, ... can be worked over easily
>> enough,
>
> Sure, you can do OOP in C as well, but who would want to?
>

I do, actually, sometimes. then again, a lot is how one defines oop...

>> more so, I can do things "my way", my desire is then typically more
>> "reflectivity" in the language, eg, if I could dynamically look up
>> functions, or step the globals, ... that would be nice.
>> I personally haven't even really been particularly motivated to move over
>> to c++, some gains, few particularly compelling reasons.
>
> Take a look at www.digitalmars.com/d/ctod.html.
>
dunno.

a lot of my stuff is stuff any reasonable coder wouldn't want to do. to some
extent, I have largely replaced most os functionality with my own code.
porting is typically easy, as most os stuff is wrapped and controlled.

some is more drastic, eg, a fs management layer, custom memory management
(dynamic types, gc, ...), (more recently heap-like stacks, dynamically
typed/managed compound types, ...).

>> take most people and c++, it is likely going to take a lot to sway them
>> at this point in time.
>
> What I find compelling is I can get the program written much faster, and
> it runs at the same or faster speed than C++. If you've got expensive
> programmers on the payroll, even a small productivity improvement can pay
> lots of $$$.
>
maybe.

I am a person who's time is essentially worthless. I sit around at home, go
to classes, and work on projects.

if I could get a job coding in c or c++ eventually, that might be cool, but
for now, I sit around doing little (parent sponsored life...).

>> likewise, there is an inherit conceptual "risk" in using languages other
>> than the mainstream, the lingering thought "if I use this, and for
>> whatever reason it dies off, will my big pile of code written in it
>> become effectively useless?".
>
> Since there are two independent D implementations, one of which is gnu and
> integrated with gcc, the compiler is not going to go away. Furthermore,
> there is far less needed to support D than is needed to support a language
> that requires a VM. D is implemented with conventional compilers, which
> means that all your other tools like editors, optimizers, code generators,
> linkers, debuggers, profilers, etc., work with D.
>
gcc implementation:
that is a good point. then again, there is also a gcc implementation of ada.

as for vm languages, yeah, debugging and similar may be an issue. a lot is
up to the parent app.

as for pure vm languages (like sun's vision of java, or .net, most
scheme/lisp implementations, ...), I have less faith in that.

my view is that vm languages are useful so long as their is a host app, but
not for writing said host app. doing all the scripts in the same lang as the
host app often makes customization a horrid pita (oh, look, I get this dll
to recompile and, oh look, the app crashes as soon as I try to use it...).

> Even though I've written code in 'popular' languages, the code I've
> written more than 15 years ago is pretty much non-viable with modern
> computers without extensive rewriting. What matters to me more these days
> is productivity of the language. C is just a lot less productive than more
> modern languages - even simple things like concatenating strings takes
> significant care.
>
yes, this is true.

one ends up having to write a huge amount of api code to largely replace all
the stuff that comes with the language, and even then they are constrained
by the need to use function calls (or sometimes macros) for everything (a
lot of this is because, well, stdio doesn't come with a customizable
filesystem interface, or garbage collection, or many other things).

function calls and macros make up a lot, and for a lot I rarely use the
basic system apis directly. the codebase is largely compiled in the form of
a lot of statically linked libraries, which may be linked together with the
frontend code to make whatever app.

or such...


.

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