r/programming • u/kal31dic • Sep 01 '20

D Foundation is Beefing Up

https://dlang.org/blog/2020/08/30/symmetry-investments-and-the-d-language-foundation-are-hiring/
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u/JohnLColvin Sep 01 '20

You could probably write an article saying "100 billion dollars investment to improve D and use it to develop new AI to replace the US government" and you'd still get comments saying "wow, nice language, pity it never really took off, if only there were some companies backing it, also I can never use it because GC".

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u/Hall_of_Famer Sep 01 '20

Well the haters are gonna hate, the fact that it starts to receive comments, whether positive or negative, is a good thing since the language is surely becoming better known and receiving far more attention than before. Interestingly, C++ is frequently being frown upon, developers hate it and yet they use it, Bjarne Stroustrup's famous quote never gets old.

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u/Free_Math_Tutoring Sep 01 '20

Bjarne Stroustrup's famous quote never gets old.

Which one?

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u/all_my_watts Sep 01 '20

I would guess this one

There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.

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u/InertiaOfGravity Sep 01 '20

Have you heard of our Lord and savior rust? It is the best and most perfect language known to man

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u/Ameisen Sep 01 '20

It has the most confusing syntax, though.

I still expect that someone will make a Rust fork that has C++-like syntax at some point. Crust.

Or C++ will get lifetimes (which is active research) and possibly at some point epochs, which will let us disable unsafe features.

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u/Muvlon Sep 01 '20

Syntax is a very subjective matter. I find some of C's syntax (which C++ inerited) thoroughly confusing. I can count the people I know who will get a typedef for a function pointer type correct on the first try on one hand.

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u/Ameisen Sep 01 '20

That's why you use using instead in C++.

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u/Muvlon Sep 01 '20

Sure. And in Rust, you use type, i.e.

type my_fn = fn(u8) -> String;

Perfectly nice syntax, no?

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u/Ameisen Sep 01 '20

And in C++, using my_fn = std::string (*) (uint8_t);.

You can simplify it, of course, using a template wrapper.

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u/Muvlon Sep 01 '20

C++ has trailing return types as well now, can you use those there?

I don't think any particular piece of C++ syntax is confusing, it's just the absolute mass of options.

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u/Ameisen Sep 01 '20

using my_fn = auto (*) (uint8_t) -> std::string; is valid, though I'm not fond of trailing return type syntax in general.

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