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digitalmars.D - About Andrei's interview, part 3

reply Ben White <benwhite thisisnotmyrealemail.com> writes:
... At the moment, Walter Bright's first priority is to finalize the 64-bit
native compiler, after which he plans to focus on dynamic loading.

At first I was like :D



... There's no incompatible D3 in the foreseeable future ...

but then I bummed.



... Get this—I've seen beautiful PHP code...

What was it like?
Aug 25 2010
next sibling parent reply Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisprog gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, August 25, 2010 17:27:41 Ben White wrote:

 ... There's no incompatible D3 in the foreseeable future ...
 
 but then I bummed.


We need D2 to completely and totally stable before we even consider anything 
like D3. If you don't properly stabilize what you have and let it mature, it's 
not likely to get used much. And as much as new features can be great, breaking 
backwards compatibility can suck too. Not to mention, I think that D2 needs to 
be used a lot more by a lot more people before we could really know what was 
done right and what was done wrong such that we would really know what to do 
with D3.

By the sounds of it, once D2 is more mature and stable, some backwards-
compatible features may be added, but we don't really need D3 at this point. D2 
is a huge gain over D1, and it was well worth breaking backwards compatability 
for it, but it's not like D1 hase ever all that much traction. There are 
definitely people who use it, but it has a relatively small user base. If D2's 
user base really increases like we'd like it to (and TDPL should help a lot
with 
that), it's going to cost users a lot more when backwards compatability is 
broken.

There may very well be a D3 someday, but D2 is still pretty nascent. We need to 
get what we have properly mature before we look at doing a major language 
rewrite.

- Jonathan M Davis
Aug 25 2010
parent reply bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Jonathan M Davis


 If D2's user base really increases like we'd like it to (and TDPL should help
a lot with 
 that), it's going to cost users a lot more when backwards compatability is 
 broken.


This is why I don't like a lot the current work done for the 64 bit
implementation. D2 has some design problems (I don't call them 'enhancement
requests') that if you want to fix may require to break backward compatibility
(they are things that can't just be added to the D2 language), few months ago I
have listed about ten of them here (and I think Walter did just ignore them),
and probably few more are present (and one or two of them in the meantime have
officially become 'things to fix', like the syntax for array ops that I think
now officially requires obligatory [], this was one of the things in my list of
little breaking changes). I'd like those problems to be fixed (or specs to take
them in account, even if the compiler implementation isn't yet up to date to
them) before people start using D2 and breaking backwards compatibility becomes
a pain. Otherwise they risk never being fixed.

Implementation matters come after design matters if you impose the constraint
of keeping backwards compatibility.

Bye,
bearophile
Aug 25 2010
next sibling parent reply Justin Johansson <no spam.com> writes:
On 26/08/10 10:55, bearophile wrote:

 Jonathan M Davis


 If D2's user base really increases like we'd like it to (and TDPL should help
a lot with
 that), it's going to cost users a lot more when backwards compatability is
 broken.


 This is why I don't like a lot the current work done for the 64 bit
implementation. D2 has some design problems (I don't call them 'enhancement
requests') that if you want to fix may require to break backward compatibility
(they are things that can't just be added to the D2 language), few months ago I
have listed about ten of them here (and I think Walter did just ignore them),
and probably few more are present (and one or two of them in the meantime have
officially become 'things to fix', like the syntax for array ops that I think
now officially requires obligatory [], this was one of the things in my list of
little breaking changes). I'd like those problems to be fixed (or specs to take
them in account, even if the compiler implementation isn't yet up to date to
them) before people start using D2 and breaking backwards compatibility becomes
a pain. Otherwise they risk never being fixed.

 Implementation matters come after design matters if you impose the constraint
of keeping backwards compatibility.

 Bye,
 bearophile


++vote
Aug 25 2010
parent reply bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Justin Johansson:

 ++vote


But this time I was a pretty idealistic person. So in the end I respect Walter
decision, because he may have taken in account more practical considerations.

Bye,
bearophile
Aug 25 2010
parent reply Justin Johansson <no spam.com> writes:
On 26/08/10 11:26, bearophile wrote:

 Justin Johansson:

 ++vote


 But this time I was a pretty idealistic person. So in the end I respect Walter
decision, because he may have taken in account more practical considerations.

 Bye,
 bearophile


Yes, understand and obviously it's Walter's call.  In hindsight perhaps
I was a bit quick to "vote".  Though I did want to voice support for
fixing up language design issues, I didn't want to sound discouraging
about W working on 64-bit either.  A lot of people will be pleased to
see 64-bit D.

Cheers, Justin
Aug 25 2010
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
Justin Johansson wrote:

 A lot of people will be pleased to
 see 64-bit D.


64 bit has been pushed aside for around 7 years now in favor of more urgent 
matters. It's time to get it done.
Aug 25 2010
parent reply Don <nospam nospam.com> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 Justin Johansson wrote:

 A lot of people will be pleased to
 see 64-bit D.


 
 64 bit has been pushed aside for around 7 years now in favor of more 
 urgent matters. It's time to get it done.


Also, I think it's critical to be certain there's nothing in the 
language which is incompatible with 64 bits. It's bound to flush out a 
lot of hidden bugs.
Aug 25 2010
parent reply Daniel Gibson <metalcaedes gmail.com> writes:
On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 8:59 AM, Don <nospam nospam.com> wrote:

 Walter Bright wrote:

 Justin Johansson wrote:

 A lot of people will be pleased to
 see 64-bit D.


 64 bit has been pushed aside for around 7 years now in favor of more
 urgent matters. It's time to get it done.


 Also, I think it's critical to be certain there's nothing in the language
 which is incompatible with 64 bits. It's bound to flush out a lot of hidden
 bugs.


Or in phobos, like std.stream.OutputStream.write(char[]) (and the
associated read(char[])).
It writes a size_t with the length of the following char-array.
Considering that this is even used on the network (with SocketStream)
this might lead to problems (write on amd64 and read on i386 or the
other way round).
I'd suggest to always write the length as a (u)long - or uint,
char-arrays/strings that are bigger than 4GB are just insane, anyway.
(Java uses short in a similar method, IIRC).
Aug 26 2010
parent bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Daniel Gibson:

 I'd suggest to always write the length as a (u)long - or uint,
 char-arrays/strings that are bigger than 4GB are just insane, anyway.
 (Java uses short in a similar method, IIRC).


A "long" suffices there, no need to use a "cent".

Bye,
bearophile
Aug 26 2010
prev sibling next sibling parent bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
 Implementation matters come after design matters if you impose the constraint
of keeping backwards compatibility.


But I agree that 64 bits is a quite important implementation matter, while
those things I did list were very little design matters :-)

Bye,
bearophile
Aug 25 2010
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
bearophile wrote:

 This is why I don't like a lot the current work done for the 64 bit
 implementation.


A lot of groups cannot consider D unless it supports 64 bit compilation.



 D2 has some design problems (I don't call them 'enhancement
 requests') that if you want to fix may require to break backward
 compatibility (they are things that can't just be added to the D2 language),
 few months ago I have listed about ten of them here (and I think Walter did
 just ignore them),


71 bugzilla issues were resolved just in the last update. I don't think it's 
quite fair to characterize the ongoing development as ignoring the community. 
You list several things *per day*. I doubt any organization could keep up with 
the sheer volume of your output <g>. I'm not suggesting that you stop doing it, 
quite the contrary. I just hope you can be realistic about how much can be done 
about them in the short term.
Aug 25 2010
parent reply Don <nospam nospam.com> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 bearophile wrote:

 This is why I don't like a lot the current work done for the 64 bit
 implementation.


 
 A lot of groups cannot consider D unless it supports 64 bit compilation.
 
 

 D2 has some design problems (I don't call them 'enhancement
 requests') that if you want to fix may require to break backward
 compatibility (they are things that can't just be added to the D2 
 language),
 few months ago I have listed about ten of them here (and I think 
 Walter did
 just ignore them),


 
 71 bugzilla issues were resolved just in the last update. I don't think 
 it's quite fair to characterize the ongoing development as ignoring the 
 community. You list several things *per day*. I doubt any organization 
 could keep up with the sheer volume of your output <g>. I'm not 
 suggesting that you stop doing it, quite the contrary. I just hope you 
 can be realistic about how much can be done about them in the short term.


Since February, 30% of bugzilla entries are from bearophile!
It's really impressive.
Aug 25 2010
parent reply Gareth Charnock <gareth.charnock gmail.com> writes:
On 26/08/10 07:57, Don wrote:

 Walter Bright wrote:

 bearophile wrote:

 This is why I don't like a lot the current work done for the 64 bit
 implementation.


 A lot of groups cannot consider D unless it supports 64 bit compilation.



 D2 has some design problems (I don't call them 'enhancement
 requests') that if you want to fix may require to break backward
 compatibility (they are things that can't just be added to the D2
 language),
 few months ago I have listed about ten of them here (and I think
 Walter did
 just ignore them),


 71 bugzilla issues were resolved just in the last update. I don't
 think it's quite fair to characterize the ongoing development as
 ignoring the community. You list several things *per day*. I doubt any
 organization could keep up with the sheer volume of your output <g>.
 I'm not suggesting that you stop doing it, quite the contrary. I just
 hope you can be realistic about how much can be done about them in the
 short term.


 Since February, 30% of bugzilla entries are from bearophile!
 It's really impressive.


I kind of started thinking of Bearophile as the conscience of the 
newsgroup a while back ;-) Always sitting on your shoulder pointing out 
how things should be better or could be fixed. He really is a tireless 
user advocate!

As for the current directly, I think the most critical matter is 
bugfixes, bugfixes, bugfixes, which is why I was pleased to see that 
last changelog. It's disheartening to run headlong into a language bug 
every time I code something in D2.
Aug 26 2010
parent reply Bruno Medeiros <brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> writes:
On 27/08/2010 03:01, Gareth Charnock wrote:

 On 26/08/10 07:57, Don wrote:

 Walter Bright wrote:

 bearophile wrote:

 This is why I don't like a lot the current work done for the 64 bit
 implementation.


 A lot of groups cannot consider D unless it supports 64 bit compilation.



 D2 has some design problems (I don't call them 'enhancement
 requests') that if you want to fix may require to break backward
 compatibility (they are things that can't just be added to the D2
 language),
 few months ago I have listed about ten of them here (and I think
 Walter did
 just ignore them),


 71 bugzilla issues were resolved just in the last update. I don't
 think it's quite fair to characterize the ongoing development as
 ignoring the community. You list several things *per day*. I doubt any
 organization could keep up with the sheer volume of your output <g>.
 I'm not suggesting that you stop doing it, quite the contrary. I just
 hope you can be realistic about how much can be done about them in the
 short term.


 Since February, 30% of bugzilla entries are from bearophile!
 It's really impressive.


 I kind of started thinking of Bearophile as the conscience of the
 newsgroup a while back ;-) Always sitting on your shoulder pointing out
 how things should be better or could be fixed. He really is a tireless
 user advocate!

 As for the current directly, I think the most critical matter is
 bugfixes, bugfixes, bugfixes, which is why I was pleased to see that
 last changelog. It's disheartening to run headlong into a language bug
 every time I code something in D2.


I don't know about the rest of people here in the NG, but actually I 
would hope bearophile would post much less often, especially when its 
him creating a new thread. And that's simply because he posts way too 
often, with lots of detail, and it takes a lot of time to read up on all 
that content, and to think about it with some depth.
My default behavior with threads created by bearophile is just to skim 
or skip them over altogether. And it has nothing to do with quality of 
what bearophile says, because actually I think he often makes good 
points and brings good insights... but there are just *way* too many of 
them :P (not to mention the huge stream of links to articles on other 
sites that often accompany bearophile's posts)

So yeah, bearophile, that's my plea. :-o Some of us like to sleep the 
recommended number of hours...

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer
Oct 05 2010
next sibling parent reply "Denis Koroskin" <2korden gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, 05 Oct 2010 19:30:59 +0400, Bruno Medeiros  
<brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> wrote:


 On 27/08/2010 03:01, Gareth Charnock wrote:

 On 26/08/10 07:57, Don wrote:

 Walter Bright wrote:

 bearophile wrote:

 This is why I don't like a lot the current work done for the 64 bit
 implementation.


 A lot of groups cannot consider D unless it supports 64 bit  
 compilation.



 D2 has some design problems (I don't call them 'enhancement
 requests') that if you want to fix may require to break backward
 compatibility (they are things that can't just be added to the D2
 language),
 few months ago I have listed about ten of them here (and I think
 Walter did
 just ignore them),


 71 bugzilla issues were resolved just in the last update. I don't
 think it's quite fair to characterize the ongoing development as
 ignoring the community. You list several things *per day*. I doubt any
 organization could keep up with the sheer volume of your output <g>.
 I'm not suggesting that you stop doing it, quite the contrary. I just
 hope you can be realistic about how much can be done about them in the
 short term.


 Since February, 30% of bugzilla entries are from bearophile!
 It's really impressive.


 I kind of started thinking of Bearophile as the conscience of the
 newsgroup a while back ;-) Always sitting on your shoulder pointing out
 how things should be better or could be fixed. He really is a tireless
 user advocate!

 As for the current directly, I think the most critical matter is
 bugfixes, bugfixes, bugfixes, which is why I was pleased to see that
 last changelog. It's disheartening to run headlong into a language bug
 every time I code something in D2.


 I don't know about the rest of people here in the NG, but actually I  
 would hope bearophile would post much less often, especially when its  
 him creating a new thread. And that's simply because he posts way too  
 often, with lots of detail, and it takes a lot of time to read up on all  
 that content, and to think about it with some depth.
 My default behavior with threads created by bearophile is just to skim  
 or skip them over altogether. And it has nothing to do with quality of  
 what bearophile says, because actually I think he often makes good  
 points and brings good insights... but there are just *way* too many of  
 them :P (not to mention the huge stream of links to articles on other  
 sites that often accompany bearophile's posts)

 So yeah, bearophile, that's my plea. :-o Some of us like to sleep the  
 recommended number of hours...


No way! Just don't read his posts if you are not interested.
Oct 05 2010
parent Bruno Medeiros <brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> writes:
On 05/10/2010 16:58, Denis Koroskin wrote:

 On Tue, 05 Oct 2010 19:30:59 +0400, Bruno Medeiros
 <brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> wrote:


 On 27/08/2010 03:01, Gareth Charnock wrote:

 On 26/08/10 07:57, Don wrote:

 Walter Bright wrote:

 bearophile wrote:

 This is why I don't like a lot the current work done for the 64 bit
 implementation.


 A lot of groups cannot consider D unless it supports 64 bit
 compilation.



 D2 has some design problems (I don't call them 'enhancement
 requests') that if you want to fix may require to break backward
 compatibility (they are things that can't just be added to the D2
 language),
 few months ago I have listed about ten of them here (and I think
 Walter did
 just ignore them),


 71 bugzilla issues were resolved just in the last update. I don't
 think it's quite fair to characterize the ongoing development as
 ignoring the community. You list several things *per day*. I doubt any
 organization could keep up with the sheer volume of your output <g>.
 I'm not suggesting that you stop doing it, quite the contrary. I just
 hope you can be realistic about how much can be done about them in the
 short term.


 Since February, 30% of bugzilla entries are from bearophile!
 It's really impressive.


 I kind of started thinking of Bearophile as the conscience of the
 newsgroup a while back ;-) Always sitting on your shoulder pointing out
 how things should be better or could be fixed. He really is a tireless
 user advocate!

 As for the current directly, I think the most critical matter is
 bugfixes, bugfixes, bugfixes, which is why I was pleased to see that
 last changelog. It's disheartening to run headlong into a language bug
 every time I code something in D2.


 I don't know about the rest of people here in the NG, but actually I
 would hope bearophile would post much less often, especially when its
 him creating a new thread. And that's simply because he posts way too
 often, with lots of detail, and it takes a lot of time to read up on
 all that content, and to think about it with some depth.
 My default behavior with threads created by bearophile is just to skim
 or skip them over altogether. And it has nothing to do with quality of
 what bearophile says, because actually I think he often makes good
 points and brings good insights... but there are just *way* too many
 of them :P (not to mention the huge stream of links to articles on
 other sites that often accompany bearophile's posts)

 So yeah, bearophile, that's my plea. :-o Some of us like to sleep the
 recommended number of hours...


 No way! Just don't read his posts if you are not interested.


Like I said, I already do that, not so because of lack of interest, but 
lack of time. If all one cares is learning, discussion, and intellectual 
discovery, then its not a problem, but please understand that most 
people here want to do productive work (ie, coding), and only dedicate a 
small portion of their time to reading posts and articles. Otherwise 
you'll get little done.

You may not care if that's my case, but do realize that Walter is in a 
very similar position. (and likely Andrei as well, to a lesser extent)
I won't speak in their name, I don't know if they read all of 
bearophile's posts in detail and with thoughtful consideration or not, 
or if they would prefer more or less posts of that nature (or not care 
at all).
I can only speak for me, but (even though I admit my time-management 
skills are less than average) I would suspect their stance is not too 
different.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer
Oct 06 2010
prev sibling next sibling parent "Simen kjaeraas" <simen.kjaras gmail.com> writes:
Bruno Medeiros <brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> wrote:


 I don't know about the rest of people here in the NG, but actually I  
 would hope bearophile would post much less often, especially when its  
 him creating a new thread. And that's simply because he posts way too  
 often, with lots of detail, and it takes a lot of time to read up on all  
 that content, and to think about it with some depth.
 My default behavior with threads created by bearophile is just to skim  
 or skip them over altogether. And it has nothing to do with quality of  
 what bearophile says, because actually I think he often makes good  
 points and brings good insights... but there are just *way* too many of  
 them :P (not to mention the huge stream of links to articles on other  
 sites that often accompany bearophile's posts)


Understandable, but bearophile's threads are often among the most
interesting ones I feel, and well worth staying up late for.



 So yeah, bearophile, that's my plea. :-o Some of us like to sleep the  
 recommended number of hours...


That I've given up on a long time ago.

-- 
Simen
Oct 05 2010
prev sibling parent reply Juanjo Alvarez <fake fakeemail.com> writes:
On Tue, 05 Oct 2010 16:30:59 +0100, Bruno Medeiros 
<brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> wrote:

 I don't know about the rest of people here in the NG, but actually 


I 

 would hope bearophile would post much less often, especially when 


its

I like to read his posts. If you used a NNTP reader on a smartphone 
(like, SPAM, the one I wrote for Android) you could reserve these 
posts for some moments like waiting in a queue or the tea to start 
boiling ;)
Oct 05 2010
parent reply Bruno Medeiros <brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> writes:
On 05/10/2010 20:53, Juanjo Alvarez wrote:

 On Tue, 05 Oct 2010 16:30:59 +0100, Bruno Medeiros
 <brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> wrote:

 I don't know about the rest of people here in the NG, but actually


 I

 would hope bearophile would post much less often, especially when


 its

 I like to read his posts. If you used a NNTP reader on a smartphone
 (like, SPAM, the one I wrote for Android) you could reserve these posts
 for some moments like waiting in a queue or the tea to start boiling ;)


Reading newsgroups on phone would suck. I already get a bit 
uncomfortable reading them on my laptop (without a peripheral monitor or 
mouse).
In any case I already try to use that sort of dead-time (mostly waiting 
for public transport or appointments) in other ways. Often its using the 
phone to read pdfs or articles.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer
Oct 06 2010
parent reply Juanjo Alvarez <fake fakeemail.com> writes:
On Wed, 06 Oct 2010 16:55:40 +0100, Bruno Medeiros 
<brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> wrote:

 Reading newsgroups on phone would suck. I already get a bit 
 uncomfortable reading them on my laptop (without a peripheral 


monitor or 

 mouse).


Not worse than reading email on a phone,trough the experience is 
course worse than on a computer.
Oct 06 2010
parent reply Bruno Medeiros <brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> writes:
On 06/10/2010 22:47, Juanjo Alvarez wrote:

 On Wed, 06 Oct 2010 16:55:40 +0100, Bruno Medeiros
 <brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> wrote:

 Reading newsgroups on phone would suck. I already get a bit
 uncomfortable reading them on my laptop (without a peripheral


 monitor or

 mouse).


 Not worse than reading email on a phone,trough the experience is course
 worse than on a computer.


Oh, it is indeed worse that reading email on a phone, unless you also 
use your email to have huge threaded discussions. Doesn't matter for me 
in any case, as I also don't read email on a phone.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer
Oct 07 2010
parent Juanjo Alvarez <juanjux gmail.com> writes:
Bruno Medeiros Wrote:


 On 06/10/2010 22:47, Juanjo Alvarez wrote:

 On Wed, 06 Oct 2010 16:55:40 +0100, Bruno Medeiros
 <brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> wrote:

 Reading newsgroups on phone would suck. I already get a bit
 uncomfortable reading them on my laptop (without a peripheral


 monitor or

 mouse).


 Not worse than reading email on a phone,trough the experience is course
 worse than on a computer.


 
 Oh, it is indeed worse that reading email on a phone, unless you also 
 use your email to have huge threaded discussions. Doesn't matter for me 
 in any case, as I also don't read email on a phone.


On my app you see the threaded messages in a screen and then when you tap or
select a message its opened in another view, fullscreen. Go back and you are
again in the threaded listing (which the read messages greyed), or tap Next and
you go to the next message in the tree without existing the message view.

As I said, not the same level of conveniente than on a computer (you can't see
the thread and the message at the same time), but still not so bad.
Oct 07 2010
prev sibling parent Bruno Medeiros <brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> writes:
On 26/08/2010 02:25, bearophile wrote:

 Jonathan M Davis


 If D2's user base really increases like we'd like it to (and TDPL should help
a lot with
 that), it's going to cost users a lot more when backwards compatability is
 broken.


 This is why I don't like a lot the current work done for the 64 bit
implementation. D2 has some design problems (I don't call them 'enhancement
requests') that if you want to fix may require to break backward compatibility
(they are things that can't just be added to the D2 language), few months ago I
have listed about ten of them here (and I think Walter did just ignore them),
and probably few more are present (and one or two of them in the meantime have
officially become 'things to fix', like the syntax for array ops that I think
now officially requires obligatory [], this was one of the things in my list of
little breaking changes). I'd like those problems to be fixed (or specs to take
them in account, even if the compiler implementation isn't yet up to date to
them) before people start using D2 and breaking backwards compatibility becomes
a pain. Otherwise they risk never being fixed.

 Implementation matters come after design matters if you impose the constraint
of keeping backwards compatibility.

 Bye,
 bearophile


I don't see how "fixing design problems that [..] break backward 
compatibility" is that much of an issue for the 64 bit implementation. 
Unless it's a really big design change (which then I would doubt would 
be accepted), what kind of D design changes would really invalidate a 
significant amount of work done on a 64bit compiler backend implementation?


-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer
Oct 05 2010
prev sibling parent reply Daniel Gibson <metalcaedes gmail.com> writes:
Ben White schrieb:

 ... At the moment, Walter Bright's first priority is to finalize the 


64-bit

 native compiler, after which he plans to focus on dynamic loading.

 At first I was like :D


Yeah, that's great news - I started a new project about 6 weeks ago 
still in D1, because D2 lacks AMD64 support (D1 has GDC).


What I found a bit misleading:
"All projects I mentioned [GDC, LDC] use the open-sourced reference 
front end to implement both D1 and D2, and trail behind the reference 
compiler by a few minor releases."

LDC hasn't done much within the last months (last source change 3 months 
ago, last change on D2 about a year ago if I understand the info in the 
SVN browser correctly) - they consider their D2 support "highly 
experimental (read: unusable)" - so I guess they're more than "a few 
minor releases" away from the current DMD D2 compiler.

GDC is actively worked on, since a few weeks ago they're heavily working 
on the D2 version again - but they're still working at version 2.020 
(which had major changes, e.g. immutable and including druntime).
That's more than "a few minor releases behind". Much of the interesting 
stuff (std.algorithm and ranges etc in phobos, alias this in the 
language, thread local storage as default, etc) is still missing.
The GDC guys are doing a great job (as far as I can judge), but I guess 
it'll take some more time until they're at a fairly recent version 
comparable to DMD 2.048 (and thus containing the features described in 
TLDP).


Cheers,
- Daniel
Aug 25 2010
parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 8/25/10 20:09 PDT, Daniel Gibson wrote:

 Ben White schrieb:
  > ... At the moment, Walter Bright's first priority is to finalize the
 64-bit
  > native compiler, after which he plans to focus on dynamic loading.
  >
  > At first I was like :D

 Yeah, that's great news - I started a new project about 6 weeks ago
 still in D1, because D2 lacks AMD64 support (D1 has GDC).


 What I found a bit misleading:
 "All projects I mentioned [GDC, LDC] use the open-sourced reference
 front end to implement both D1 and D2, and trail behind the reference
 compiler by a few minor releases."

 LDC hasn't done much within the last months (last source change 3 months
 ago, last change on D2 about a year ago if I understand the info in the
 SVN browser correctly) - they consider their D2 support "highly
 experimental (read: unusable)" - so I guess they're more than "a few
 minor releases" away from the current DMD D2 compiler.

 GDC is actively worked on, since a few weeks ago they're heavily working
 on the D2 version again - but they're still working at version 2.020
 (which had major changes, e.g. immutable and including druntime).
 That's more than "a few minor releases behind". Much of the interesting
 stuff (std.algorithm and ranges etc in phobos, alias this in the
 language, thread local storage as default, etc) is still missing.
 The GDC guys are doing a great job (as far as I can judge), but I guess
 it'll take some more time until they're at a fairly recent version
 comparable to DMD 2.048 (and thus containing the features described in
 TLDP).


In brief, I didn't do my homework and rightly got shafted. Yet another 
instance of an old lesson.

Andrei
Aug 25 2010