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digitalmars.D - Q: commercial compiler manufacturer

reply William Bolish <wwbolish gmail.com> writes:
Q: Will D likely ever be picked up by a major compiler manufacturer?

The language looks really good, but without a major compiler manufacturer
promoting & supporting the language, it seems major projects will never be
undertaken by large corporations.

This is what I am hearing from the firm I am contracting with (an energy
industry supplier).

Any suggestions from anyone about any very large projects underway would be
appreciated.

Walter and Andrei: how would you approach / answer this to a client?
Jun 03 2011
next sibling parent reply "Vladimir Panteleev" <vladimir thecybershadow.net> writes:
On Sat, 04 Jun 2011 07:01:31 +0300, William Bolish <wwbolish gmail.com>  
wrote:


 Q: Will D likely ever be picked up by a major compiler manufacturer?

 The language looks really good, but without a major compiler manufacturer
 promoting & supporting the language, it seems major projects will never  
 be
 undertaken by large corporations.

 This is what I am hearing from the firm I am contracting with (an energy
 industry supplier).


Python, Ruby, Perl, PHP did not need corporate backing in order to become  
popular, AFAIK.

-- 
Best regards,
  Vladimir                            mailto:vladimir thecybershadow.net
Jun 03 2011
parent Caligo <iteronvexor gmail.com> writes:
On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 11:08 PM, Vladimir Panteleev
<vladimir thecybershadow.net> wrote:

 On Sat, 04 Jun 2011 07:01:31 +0300, William Bolish <wwbolish gmail.com>
 wrote:


 Q: Will D likely ever be picked up by a major compiler manufacturer?

 The language looks really good, but without a major compiler manufacture=




r

 promoting & supporting the language, it seems major projects will never =




be

 undertaken by large corporations.

 This is what I am hearing from the firm I am contracting with (an energy
 industry supplier).


 Python, Ruby, Perl, PHP did not need corporate backing in order to become
 popular, AFAIK.

 --
 Best regards,
 =A0Vladimir =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0mailto=


:vladimir thecybershadow.net


They probably didn't, but it would have helped if there was a team of
paid developers working on them full-time.  We're not in a
resource-based economy yet, you know.



 Jun 04 2011



prev sibling next sibling parent  Jesse Phillips <jessekphillips+D gmail.com>  writes:


William Bolish Wrote:


 Q: Will D likely ever be picked up by a major compiler manufacturer?
 
 The language looks really good, but without a major compiler manufacturer
 promoting & supporting the language, it seems major projects will never be
 undertaken by large corporations.
 
 This is what I am hearing from the firm I am contracting with (an energy
 industry supplier).
 
 Any suggestions from anyone about any very large projects underway would be
 appreciated.
 
 Walter and Andrei: how would you approach / answer this to a client?


I'm not really sure what would fall under "major compiler manufacturer."
Google? Microsoft? Sun? Oracle? Borland? DigitalMars is a compiler
manufacturer, or at least their product is compilers. Walter developed the
Zortec C++ compiler and has continues to maintain it. And the vague information
I see, his clients seem to be very pleased with his work.



 Jun 03 2011



prev sibling next sibling parent  Brad Roberts <braddr puremagic.com>  writes:


On 6/3/2011 9:01 PM, William Bolish wrote:

 Q: Will D likely ever be picked up by a major compiler manufacturer?
 
 The language looks really good, but without a major compiler manufacturer
 promoting & supporting the language, it seems major projects will never be
 undertaken by large corporations.
 
 This is what I am hearing from the firm I am contracting with (an energy
 industry supplier).
 
 Any suggestions from anyone about any very large projects underway would be
 appreciated.
 
 Walter and Andrei: how would you approach / answer this to a client?


It's something of a catch-22.  Before the big name vendors will even consider
adding a d frontend to their compilers,
they'll need to have significant customer bases asking for it.  For there to be
significant customer bases asking their
vendors, there needs to be big customer base in the first place.  For there to
be a big customer base, it needs either
some luck and faith of early adopters, such as ourselves, growing steadily
until some inflection point where usage
explodes, or the faith of a major company (or three) to be one of those early
adopters.

Like any new company, product, language, anything.. to become successful is
some amount of luck, some amount of hard
work, some amount of timing, some amount of being a superior product, and a
whole lotta other variables.

The user base of D has grown considerably over the years.  It seems to be
accelerating too.  D2 is growing more stable,
though it still has a ways to go (on many fronts, not just the compiler(s)).

My 2 cents,
Brad



 Jun 03 2011



prev sibling next sibling parent  "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a>  writes:


"William Bolish" <wwbolish gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:iscamr$1s3l$1 digitalmars.com...

 Q: Will D likely ever be picked up by a major compiler manufacturer?

 The language looks really good, but without a major compiler manufacturer
 promoting & supporting the language, it seems major projects will never be
 undertaken by large corporations.

 This is what I am hearing from the firm I am contracting with (an energy
 industry supplier).

 Any suggestions from anyone about any very large projects underway would 
 be
 appreciated.

 Walter and Andrei: how would you approach / answer this to a client?


A large corporation put out Visual SourceSafe. Smaller garage devs put out 
Subversion, Mercurial, etc. 'Nuff said. 



 Jun 03 2011



prev sibling next sibling parent reply Daniel Gibson <metalcaedes gmail.com>  writes:


Am 04.06.2011 06:01, schrieb William Bolish:

 Q: Will D likely ever be picked up by a major compiler manufacturer?

 The language looks really good, but without a major compiler manufacturer
 promoting&  supporting the language, it seems major projects will never be
 undertaken by large corporations.

 This is what I am hearing from the firm I am contracting with (an energy
 industry supplier).

 Any suggestions from anyone about any very large projects underway would be
 appreciated.

 Walter and Andrei: how would you approach / answer this to a client?


AFAIK there are plans to integrate GDC (the GCC based D compiler) into 
the official GCC.
Once that happens the compiler manufacturer with the biggest user base 
(GCC) supports D.

I don't really think that commercial compiler manufacturers still matter 
that much, besides special embedded platforms and stuff.
Sure, Microsofts Visual Studio is still big and some people even buy 
Intels ICC, but for C/C++ GCC is pretty widely used.
Most other languages (Java, Python, Perl, PHP (ok, not really a 
programming language), Delphi, ...) are not supported by traditional 
compiler vendors (exception: That vendor invented the language himself, 
like Walter/Digitalmars invented D). You usually have one compiler from 
the developers of the language and some other compilers that aren't used 
too much (like Jython) that are not from big companys either.

Cheers,
- Daniel



 Jun 04 2011



  parent  Caligo <iteronvexor gmail.com>  writes:


On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 3:10 AM, Daniel Gibson <metalcaedes gmail.com> wrote=
:

 Am 04.06.2011 06:01, schrieb William Bolish:

 Q: Will D likely ever be picked up by a major compiler manufacturer?

 The language looks really good, but without a major compiler manufacture=




r

 promoting& =A0supporting the language, it seems major projects will neve=




r be

 undertaken by large corporations.

 This is what I am hearing from the firm I am contracting with (an energy
 industry supplier).

 Any suggestions from anyone about any very large projects underway would
 be
 appreciated.

 Walter and Andrei: how would you approach / answer this to a client?


 AFAIK there are plans to integrate GDC (the GCC based D compiler) into th=


e

 official GCC.
 Once that happens the compiler manufacturer with the biggest user base (G=


CC)

 supports D.

 I don't really think that commercial compiler manufacturers still matter
 that much, besides special embedded platforms and stuff.
 Sure, Microsofts Visual Studio is still big and some people even buy Inte=


ls

 ICC, but for C/C++ GCC is pretty widely used.
 Most other languages (Java, Python, Perl, PHP (ok, not really a programmi=


ng

 language), Delphi, ...) are not supported by traditional compiler vendors
 (exception: That vendor invented the language himself, like
 Walter/Digitalmars invented D). You usually have one compiler from the
 developers of the language and some other compilers that aren't used too
 much (like Jython) that are not from big companys either.

 Cheers,
 - Daniel


GDC becoming part of GCC is very important, and I really hope we see
it happen in 4.7.



 Jun 04 2011



prev sibling  parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org>  writes:


On 06/03/2011 11:01 PM, William Bolish wrote:

 Q: Will D likely ever be picked up by a major compiler manufacturer?

 The language looks really good, but without a major compiler manufacturer
 promoting&  supporting the language, it seems major projects will never be
 undertaken by large corporations.

 This is what I am hearing from the firm I am contracting with (an energy
 industry supplier).

 Any suggestions from anyone about any very large projects underway would be
 appreciated.

 Walter and Andrei: how would you approach / answer this to a client?


Brad gave a sensible response. If I were asked, I'd point out that we 
are making serious headways with the GNU compiler suite integration; I 
hope we'll have some news soon about that.

Beyond that, a company looking for a safe bet would find it difficult to 
choose D at this point. The first large adopter of D would have to be an 
organisation willing to take some risk and bear the brunt of building 
some infrastructure, to get the strategic advantages of using a superior 
language in return.


Andrei



 Jun 04 2011



  parent reply Trass3r <un known.com>  writes:


 Brad gave a sensible response. If I were asked, I'd point out that we  
 are making serious headways with the GNU compiler suite integration; I  
 hope we'll have some news soon about that.


Looking forward to that!



 Beyond that, a company looking for a safe bet would find it difficult to  
 choose D at this point. The first large adopter of D would have to be an  
 organisation willing to take some risk and bear the brunt of building  
 some infrastructure, to get the strategic advantages of using a superior  
 language in return.


Yep, big companies are just too rigid and blinkered. At Mercedes they  
didn't even know Lua, let alone D.
But I am aware of two smaller German companies who use D(1) in production.



 Jun 04 2011



  parent reply Daniel Gibson <metalcaedes gmail.com>  writes:


Am 04.06.2011 21:33, schrieb Trass3r:

 Brad gave a sensible response. If I were asked, I'd point out that we
 are making serious headways with the GNU compiler suite integration; I
 hope we'll have some news soon about that.


 
 Looking forward to that!
 
 

 Beyond that, a company looking for a safe bet would find it difficult
 to choose D at this point. The first large adopter of D would have to
 be an organisation willing to take some risk and bear the brunt of
 building some infrastructure, to get the strategic advantages of using
 a superior language in return.


 
 Yep, big companies are just too rigid and blinkered. At Mercedes they
 didn't even know Lua, let alone D.
 But I am aware of two smaller German companies who use D(1) in production.


Two? I only know of that company in Berlin that does something related
to stalking people on the Internet to deliver personalized ads or
something like that. What's the other one?

Cheers,
- Daniel



 Jun 04 2011



  parent reply Trass3r <un known.com>  writes:


 Two? I only know of that company in Berlin that does something related
 to stalking people on the Internet to deliver personalized ads or
 something like that. What's the other one?


To my knowledge http://www.funkwerk-itk.com/



 Jun 04 2011



  parent  Daniel Gibson <metalcaedes gmail.com>  writes:


Am 04.06.2011 21:50, schrieb Trass3r:

 Two? I only know of that company in Berlin that does something related
 to stalking people on the Internet to deliver personalized ads or
 something like that. What's the other one?


 
 To my knowledge http://www.funkwerk-itk.com/


Interesting, thanks! :-)



 Jun 04 2011