The D Programming Language

dereferenced writes: "Walter Bright, author of the original Zortech C++ Compiler and the free (as in beer) Digital Mars C/C++ Compiler, has posted a draft specification for a new programming language that he describes as "a successor to C and C++". It seems to me that most of the "new" programming languages fall into one of two categories: Those from academia with radical new paradigms and those from large corporations with a focus on RAD and the web. Maybe its time for a new language born out of practical experience implementing compilers."

Comments

templates and operator overloading are good things

[sanermind]

It seems this guy really dosen't like c++. Now, being that he is a compiler implementor, I can certainly understand that! *grin*

Templates and stack instantiation of of objects with semantics [i.e. constructors/destructors] is a royal pain in the a** for compiler writers. In fact, only somewhat more recently is g++ even able to handle templates in a decent way; it took a long time to get it right. C++ was a very ambitious language, hard as hell to implement, but that's what makes it so usefull. Give up templates and multiple inheirantance? He suggests this is a good thing?! D is clearly not a language innovation, he should have called it C--.

Besides, you don't actually have to use such features extensively [or at all, really] in a C++ program. You could always avoid iostream and just #include old stdio.h, for example, only choosing to use classes with constructors for some usefull/neccessariy/labor-saving part of the code, while all the rest of it is essentially no different then C [aside from stricter compile-time type checking, which ANSI C has been moving towards anyway, lately]

This is no innovation.

A few other random points:
Ohh! Garbage collection, you can link to a garbage collecting malloc in a C++ program anyway. [If you really care to look into it, C++ allows a whole range of complex underlying storage classes for custom memory management of different parts of a project.]

Arrays are not first class objects?!
Well, this is true, sort of. But you can choose to use vectors, [or other more efficient representations [such as maps, etc] depending on your data type, and with inlining, they will be as efficient as if they were 'native language syntax' features. You don't even have to use the STL, you can write a custom implementation of dynamicly resizable vectors of your own [with automatic bounds checking and resizing, for example] quite trivially. I did it once, and it took, what, 2 pages of source. That's the power of C++, it's so expressive for implementing custom manipulations of low level data, packaged nicely into classes.
No on stack variables? All data as dynamic references?
Yech. Generally too inefficient. I still suspect that he just dosen't want to tackle the hairness of writing such a complex compiler. Remember, you can use only dynamic memory in C++ easily enough, with garbage collection too.

Overall, I think D is too lenient. I give him an F.

Still, I strongly respect the desire to attempt to implement a novel language. Not that there aren't hundreds out there, but it's a noble effort. Still, publishing without even demo code? Yeesh.

Sounds like...

[dmorin]

...just a case of a guy who knows what he doesn't like about C/C++, and has the capability to do something about it, doing it. More power to him. Hey, if it generates traditional binary executable code so the end result is independent of the D language, and it really does have the advantages he says, then what does he have to prove to anybody? Create his own little company doing D development, crank out better product faster than anybody else, and take over the world. It could happen. If he's managed to create the language that he would prefer to work in, go for it. His only problem would be getting programmers. But it's not like D would be the first proprietary language out there.

If, on the other hand, all he wants to do is sell compilers, and therefore he needs to convince the rest of the world of the language's benefit, then fooey.

And for the record, damn, I feel old -- I remember trying to make the Zortech compiler work for an old project of mine circa maybe 1989 or so(?) and having problems. I think at one point or another I might have actually gotten email from Walter. Wow, names from the past. In a conference call yesterday I needed to come up with a secure hashing algorithm and I said "ROT13. If we need extra security we can do it twice." and absolutely no one got it.

Anyway, back on topic: No templates? Oooooo, I have a C++ friend who is gonna be pissed....

duane

"In C++, you can look at your friend's privates."