D.NET

Humbled · Joined: 17 May 2004 Posts: 3

No, please don't kill me.

D is a very powerful and expressive language. It has C-family syntax, like Java and C#. In other words, it wouldn't be a stretch for people in the industry right now to learn it and start using it. I believe that because of unit testing, DBC, and other features (like the upcoming mixins), D could be a real contender in the enterprise.

The best way to get there is to take advantage of a known enterprise platform. I would suggest a JVM bytecode compiler, but I do not believe that the Java compiler has enough features to fully realize D as specified. I could be wrong, and I hope so.

But because of that risk, I believe efforts are better concentrated at targeting the CLR and .NET.

Here is a non-inclusive list of benefits D.NET will bring us:
- All .NET libraries (Managed DirectX anyone?)
- Possible deployment in the enterprise (read: industry attention)
- Write .NET libraries in D
- Cross-platform GUIs with Gtk#, or others

Not as many are embracing C# as Microsoft had hoped. Now's the time.

H

Edit: Sorry about the poll. Seemed good at first, but perhaps it's sorta dumb at this phase. That poll question is more applicable if D.NET exists. Smile

jcc7 · Joined: 22 Feb 2004 Posts: 657 Location: Muskogee, OK, USA

I think most fans of D would agree that the more portable and broad D support is, the more successful it is. Just as tying the front end into GCC allows D to be compiled on many more platforms, bringing D to .NET would also help D. As you mention, .NET has particular benefits.

I don't know how much effort it would take, but you might be able to hit the ground running by familiarizing yourself with David Friedman effort with GCC.

brad · Posted: Mon May 17, 2004 5:55 pm Post subject:

I'm using D to get away from Java's JVM and get "closer to the metal" with something that is still cross-platform. So I don't have much interest in this project. But as JCC said, exposure for D is not a bad thing. This is an add-on in my mind that could be used or not be used - up to the developer.
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csauls · Joined: 27 Mar 2004 Posts: 278

I'm not sure how likely I'd personally be to use it, but I wouldn't mind seeing a D.NET. Especially if it could be supported in Mono... then I probably would use it for certain things.
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Carlos · Joined: 19 Mar 2004 Posts: 396 Location: Canyon, TX

I thought about that a couple of months ago, and I actually started something. I have a C# project that takes C/C++/D/Java/C# like syntax and produces IL code, but only for arithmetic expressions yet. Basically, you can do things like this:

Humbled · Joined: 17 May 2004 Posts: 3

Thanks for your input.

Yes, I agree with all of you. Whether we, personally, will use D.NET is an unknown, but its hard to deny that it could bring more exposure to the language.

I know very little about ILASM, but I guess it's about time to start learning. I would still rather target the JVM (I'm more familiar with it), but I don't think bytecode has the appropriate features to support D. Notably, delegates.

I'll take a look at some of the projects suggested, to see how they work and if I can't cannibalize any code. I figure that GCC must be able to take some sort of language-neutral intermediary form for that project to work. If I can get a complete D parser already made, that would certainly speed things up... Smile

Have any of you seen good ILASM books besides the spec? Wink

Humbled · Joined: 17 May 2004 Posts: 3

Walter confirmed my suspicions on the D newsgroup:

Java Bytecode is not sufficient for D. However, ILASM should be capable.

Just as an aside, for those of you who like D but need to stay in a JVM, check out Groovy.

auzy · Joined: 11 Jun 2004 Posts: 4

WE shouldn't do it.. MS will just change .Net and we'll be catching up yet again.. We should develop our own libraries which are used primarily, and only have minimal support for .net..

MS already has a few plans to change .NET.. we will never catch up, so why bother at all?? Our implementation will always be inferior, and if we dont have it, ppl will ignore it, but if we do, people will think our .NET implementation is incomplete, so the rest will be..

We should do our own thing.. Just please, think to the future.. Remember what happened to HTML and java, and now to SVG.. MS is breaking all of those standards to steal them away.. Sun finally got back in control of Java now that they won a lawsuit against MS.. Adding .NET support is basically a way of asking MS to take D, and make D#, a language guarenteed only to ever be up to date on windows.

I'd say lets get our library working fully first, because we even add minimal .NET support, your asking maybe you'll get a lot of programmers, but at the end, its a BAD idea.. just cause everyone else does something, doesn't mean its a good idea, just means they are following the crowd
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jcc7 · Joined: 22 Feb 2004 Posts: 657 Location: Muskogee, OK, USA

JJR · Joined: 22 Feb 2004 Posts: 1104

After reading Auzy's post, I tend to agree with most of what was said. The battleground is conveniently situated on the enemy turf to the advantage of the opponents tactics. This will likely misrepresent D as the weaker language. C# will clobber D, that way. Not a good way to introduce D to the masses.

Just my opinion,

John R.

auzy · Joined: 11 Jun 2004 Posts: 4

I actually think that what will happen is that we will never catch up to .NET, we will keep getting more and more behind, until people just give up on .NET completely.. Or they base their software on .NET in linux, but it falls so far behind that to keep up, they will just port their software to C# (which is similar enough that it wouldn't take a substantial amount of effort)..

There is no way we could keep up to it, so why try?? At the end it will just make D look like its trying to imitate C#, always trying to catch up with it, while the situation is the opposite..
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jcc7 · Joined: 22 Feb 2004 Posts: 657 Location: Muskogee, OK, USA

Update: Deja Augustine has been working on a project to create a D compiler that produces MSIL called D.NET. (I summarized some of his newsgroup posts at Wiki4D.)

StringCheesian · Joined: 31 Mar 2005 Posts: 17

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't D as it is (without .NET) provide most of the important advantages of stuff like Java/.NET: Garbage Collection, etc, without the disadvantages:
1. high memory/CPU overhead
2. slowness
3. dependancy on bulky (read: bad for 56Kers that don't already have it) runtime environments to run
all 3 caused by the interpretted bytecode virtual machine...

I mean, why would you actually want it to not be native machine code, which is superior in every way except perhaps binary portability?

aldacron · Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 4:28 am Post subject:

stjepan · Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Posts: 22 Location: Croatia

I hate Virtual Machines!
I like D because it doesn't have Vm.
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