7 ms·

As far as adoption is concerned, I'm not sure it should be that big of a concern. After all, D is supported by GCC and Clang and continually being maintained,

by Rounin 7mo ago

As far as adoption is concerned, I'm not sure it should be that big of a concern. After all, D is supported by GCC and Clang and continually being maintained, and if updates stopped coming at some point in the future, anyone who knew a bit of C / Java / insert language here could easily port it to their language of choice. Meanwhile, its syntax is more expressive than many other compiled languages, the library is feature-rich and fairly tidy, and for me it's been a joy to use.

pjmlp 7mo ago
GCC usually drops frontends if there are no maintainers around, it already happened to gcj, and I am waiting for the same to happen to gccgo any time now, as it has hardly gotten any updates since Go 1.18. The team is quite small and mostly volunteers, so there is the question how long can Walter Bright keep at it, and who will keep it going afterwards when he passes the torch.
- schveiguy 7mo ago
  gdc is 100% Iain Buclaw. But he and Walter collaborate on needs for gcc compatibility, as long as Iain is around, gdc will be around. It is true we have a small team. But we are a dedicated team.
  - joecool1029 7mo ago
    > gdc is 100% Iain Buclaw So uh, funny story: I didn’t know this a few years back. GDC was missing the sqlite interface in GDC’s phobos. This made it so the dlang onedrive client and some other packages wouldn’t compile with it. Situation was like this for years: https://forum.dlang.org/thread/doevjetmiwxovecplksr@forum.dlang.org https://forum.dlang.org/thread/doevjetmiwxovecplksr@forum.dl... I eventually complained that it was easier to argue with Walter about politics on HN than get a library fixed on his programming language. Fortunately the right people saw it and it was fixed soon after: https://bugs.gentoo.org/722094 https://bugs.gentoo.org/722094
  - pjmlp 7mo ago
    And was for several releases delayed due to personal issues, which is understandable in a small team among open source projects, however it is a problem.
nicwilson 7mo ago
It has an LLVM backend, LDC, that is separate from the LLVM project/Clang.

by Rounin 7mo ago

pjmlp 7mo ago

GCC usually drops frontends if there are no maintainers around, it already happened to gcj, and I am waiting for the same to happen to gccgo any time now, as it has hardly gotten any updates since Go 1.18. The team is quite small and mostly volunteers, so there is the question how long can Walter Bright keep at it, and who will keep it going afterwards when he passes the torch.

schveiguy 7mo ago
gdc is 100% Iain Buclaw. But he and Walter collaborate on needs for gcc compatibility, as long as Iain is around, gdc will be around. It is true we have a small team. But we are a dedicated team.
- joecool1029 7mo ago
  > gdc is 100% Iain Buclaw So uh, funny story: I didn’t know this a few years back. GDC was missing the sqlite interface in GDC’s phobos. This made it so the dlang onedrive client and some other packages wouldn’t compile with it. Situation was like this for years: https://forum.dlang.org/thread/doevjetmiwxovecplksr@forum.dlang.org https://forum.dlang.org/thread/doevjetmiwxovecplksr@forum.dl... I eventually complained that it was easier to argue with Walter about politics on HN than get a library fixed on his programming language. Fortunately the right people saw it and it was fixed soon after: https://bugs.gentoo.org/722094 https://bugs.gentoo.org/722094
- pjmlp 7mo ago
  And was for several releases delayed due to personal issues, which is understandable in a small team among open source projects, however it is a problem.

nicwilson 7mo ago

It has an LLVM backend, LDC, that is separate from the LLVM project/Clang.