I've been experimenting with D. I've ported some C# code with very little difficulty (It's syntax is definitely influenced by C#). It was actually amazingly easy to port. I just had to change the case of some variables and make a few other small syntactic changes.

Anyone else used it?

if im not mistaken, i think D was out before c#, no?

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I think so.

I'm an RAII fan so I see taking C++ but making it garbage collected as blasphemy. I klnow there's other differences too but it doesn't appeal very much as a language to me.

D was one of the languages that I was considering to learn when I decided to break off from c++. It seems to be a revision of c++ that throws away a lot of the complexity and adds in features that more recent languages are heading towards (ie garbage collection). I ended up not learning it because it was too much like c++ and didn't seem to offer that much of an advantage.

Yeah, it drops a lot of the bad features of C++. And is significantly easier to use from what little I have done so far. I think D is newer, 1.0 just came out recently (after C# 2.0).

I don't think D offers enough of an advantage for anyone to bother switching. People that like C++ will stick with C++, and if you want something different you'll either go to a C# or ruby or something else that's significantly different. More so than ever now that C++0x is coming up, which is likely to require that implementations provide optional garbage collection, among other enhancements.


No, D is much older than C#. Remember, big vendors use 1.0 as the crappy first public version. Open source projects usually stick to 0.x until it's matured.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_o ... _languages

Lists C, C++, C#, and Java as predecessors of D.

I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_languages has it more accurate, listing C#, Java, C and C++ as influences to D. I think D appeared just before C#, but the development of it has lasted several years now, so it would have taken some influence from C# as that has risen in popularity in that time period.

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I think C# becomes more like continuation of C++, that tries to throw away much of its complexity

C# is more like Java, just with some of the useful complexity from C++ put back

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D has a keyword dedicated to RAII. Also, don't confuse garbage collection with RAII.


It's lacking in libraries, but I've found it usable for game development. It fixes some of my gripes with C++, but adds other annoyances in the process.

Reasons not to switch:
1.) No real IDE for it yet. Codeblocks has a plugin for it, unfortunately it's no Visual Studio.
2.) The compiler makes some fat executables (270KB at least)
3.) There are multiple standard libraries for it floating around. This obviously causes problems if you're using the wrong one.
4.) The compiler doesn't always give very useful error messages. Can be very annoying. Errors are typically readable/comprhensible though
5.) Slightly worse performance than the usual C++ compilers
6.) Only has two compilers at the moment.
7.) D decided to take a weird approach to operator overloading. Coincidentally, I find it not as powerful/useful as C++'s.
8.) It's compiled to native code (unlike c#/java managed code). I decided to count this against D since, at least to me, having a JIT would be more useful. I have little knowledge of VM's and JIT, so perhaps this even a good thing :\

Reasons to switch from C++:
1.) Much faster compile times
2.) D is easier to parse than c++, and the parser for the DMD compiler is openly available. Because of this there's already a tool that compiles your application by parsing it and including all the needed libraries with a simple call like:
3.) Cleans up some of the dirty c++ syntax, but is still about the same (like Java/C#). Makes switching fairly painless.
4.) It's garbage collected by default, but you may continue to use pointers and such in the usual C way. Garbage collector may be disabled with extra work (why bother).
5.) Still pretty portable. DMD compiler has native windows and linux, and the gcc D compiler works for win/lin/mac I'm told (not sure how well).
6.) It has prettier template syntax than C++. Its templates arguably have more power behind them via some of the compile-time things the compiler lets you do.
7.) uses java-like modules/packages rather than the crappy #include stuff
8.) Misc useful additions: functions/classes defined inside functions, no more declaring classes/functions, array literals, and anonymous functions.

Everything said applied to D 1.0. D 2.0 is the next major update to the language that's in alpha stage now, containing more changes/additions that are certain to break backwards compatibility with D 1.0 :(

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Heard in #gpwiki: <wzl> is there some serious grammar fail in your line or am i just too intelligent for your logic

You can use pointers (and sometimes have to) also when the gc is on.
Note that disabling the gc is nothing more than 1 function call, so its really easy.

I'm really in love with D, and I was a real C++-Coder before. The development time is shorter and your Code is more readable. Due to the relatively small community it has not as much libraries as C++ has, but note that its no big deal to use any existing C-Library in D. I can only highly recommend to give it another try!

And I personally use gedit. Neither compare to the IDE's that C# and java have.


I see your point :P But it could be bad for not allowing runtime tricks like reflection that java/C# can do.


This one has been hitting me lately pretty bad. Missing a '}' will tell you "UNEXPECTED EOF" or something, without a line number or any good indication of what the problem is. This is also true of certain cases with missing ';'. Also, template errors never provide enough information. They might tell me there's an error in the standard library file somewhere, but the error is actually where I'm using it in my own code. Can be VERY annoying with larger projects.


I have not tried GDC yet, and I should. I must have been thinking more about the lack of support and poorness of the DMD compiler when I wrote that. Thinking about it now, the number of compilers available for D isn't much of a negative considering there are two main compilers for C++, two main compilers for C#, and I'm sure not many more than two main compilers for java (I don't use java much). It's worth noting that D's DMD compiler gets regular updates, which I am very happy about.


They're named. Like "opAdd" rather than "operator+". It doesn't have as many overloadable operators as C++ (but the number of operators overloadable have grown since my post). And the lack of being able to pass references around means making hacks like opIndexAssign.


Some of my reasons didn't make much sense, since I may choose to compare speeds with only C++ and then compare certain features with C# rather than comparing it with each language. I should have just simply said that D is a nice mix of the languages, with comparable speeds to C++ yet having the nice high level features of java and C#. It may fall short in a few areas like all languages do, and it shines in others.

I love D too :) (but not the dmd compiler ;))

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Heard in #gpwiki: <wzl> is there some serious grammar fail in your line or am i just too intelligent for your logic

Agreed. But I personally don't need these fancy IDE-features. But if one needs them or not depends on a lot of factors, so maybe we shouldnt stress this topic too much


I don't use such stuff much, but D today has as well runtime as compile time reflection stuff which I heard should be quite cool already.
(For example you can create objects at runtime by only knowing the class name, I used this for a serialization framework which reconstructed objects from a file)


Hmmkay. Missing/wrong linenumbers have been an issue to me too. But I tend to compile very often, so there isnt much Code that could have been the reason when I see an error message. Good syntax highlighting also makes finding { } problems very easy. At least in the case of a missing ';' I relatively quickly understood what gdc wanted to tell me. No idea if the quality of error messages is distinct on gdc vs. dmd, though.


Named: I would that count as a (+) because things like "operator()()" make it harder to write a parser/compiler because its an akward syntactic exception of the general rules. (Also I find it easier to read for humans). But agreed to your (-) that its not syntactilly obvious if you are really defining an operator.

I can't say much to the rest since I didn't use operator overloading so excessively yet (neither in C++ nor in D). But D class instances have always references so I'm not sure, what you mean with your last sentence.


Same feeling as I have I was forced to use gdc for a long time (because of a 64bit linux) and now I am developing the project in parallel on a 32bit windows machine with dmd and ran into one or two annoying things already.
(Note however that it took practically no time to port the code. Try that with C++, not even integer will be the same anymore!)

Meta:
Our posts are quite long and whe're discussing several issues at once, if there's more to it I suggest we somehow split things up and/or move elsewhere with it?

Henning

Yeah, as long as there is a good IDE (as in functions well and can perform the IDE tasks that are actually necessary), the rest is mostly just about preference. I myself rely heavily on informative IDEs and intellisense just since I don't like to spend my time memorizing the whole .NET library instead of using it. But the .NET IDE is far from fast and light.



But can you also generate a list of all the properties, methods, attributes, public fields, constructors, base class, interfaces, namespace, etc, invoke the methods, get their types, and get the types of their parameters?

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No, but as said I didn't miss it yet. There is some support for getting an overview over the classes, methods and members in the current module that's usually enogh for me. But as also mentions what one needs depends on many factors including (but not limited to): project size, language, structure and size of used (standard-) libraries, personal preference.

That was well said! Applause!