Thread: D programming language

http://www.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq.html#invention

Stroustrup worked on C++ from 79 - 83 when the first version came out. Of which, it wasn't till 89(i think) till walter bright(the guy doing D) released the first c++ compiler that wasn't just a C translater. And even then c++ didn't become that widely used till the early/mid 90s. And really the only reason it was accepted that fast was because it was just a superset of C.

Technically the first verson of D isn't even out as its features aren't quite finalized yet. There are many people(including myself) who are still waiting for a final version before spending any real ammount of time with it.

Well, the same could be said of Java, C++, and even C because their standards are not locked either with improvements being added currently or in the future.

Java makes a few changes every few years and has had a somewhat finalized spec for 8+ years. C and C++ so far make very small changes every 10 or so years. Huge difference when D hasn't nor ever advertised as being a final product yet, and is being updated about every 2 weeks now.

Well the languages you mention have all been in progress for years and they are reaching a sort of plateau. D is still at the foothills, but climbing rapidly. Whether it's much of a summit is yet to be seen, but I am changing my mind a bit. I thought D was stupid because there were no holes that needed to be filled by another language - but there was that guy in the 1800's who wanted to close the patent office because "everything had already been invented". What exactly is D's main goal and specialization?

D's been around for at least 1-2 years. If it's being significantly updated every two weeks, then it would either be a different language by now or someone is exagerating.

Just because D isn't popular, doesn't mean it's a worthless language.

C became popular because of its speed and power.
C++ became popular because it was almost as fast as C, but building large complex programs in OOP was easier and less time consuming.
Visual Basic became popular because it was easy to build windows applications.
Java became popular because of it's cross-platform capabilities, and it's combination of power and ease.
Pascal became popular because it was an easy teaching language (just because it was ever popular, doesn't mean it was a great programming language).
COBOL for building business applications.
Fortran for building engineering applications.
C# because it's by Microsoft.

I'm sure you get the point. D just hasn't become popular because no one has found any true benefits in using it, and if there's no real benefit of using it... no one is willing to take the time to learn it.

Wait until someone finds a purpose for it, then see if it ever becomes popular.

And how can anyone knock a programming language they've never really used?

So in other words, D may be a great programming language, but it has just been marketed very poorly (this coming from a business and CIS major )

i always find the sort of replies in threads like these highly amusing.

anyone who claims that another programming language is a "joke" isn't worthy of the title "programmer".