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digitalmars.D - What is the Philosophy of D?

reply codephantom <me noyb.com> writes:
D's overview page says "It doesn't come with .... an overriding 
philosophy."

Is philosophy not important?

I'd like to argue, that the problem of focusing on getting the 
job done quickly and reliably, does *not* leave behind 
maintainable, easy to understand code, but rather it leads to 
unintended outcomes ...

If the philosophy of C, is 'the programmer is in charge', what 
might the philosophy of D be?

e.g. Maximum precision in expression, perhaps?
Oct 15 2017
next sibling parent ketmar <ketmar ketmar.no-ip.org> writes:
codephantom wrote:


 If the philosophy of C, is 'the programmer is in charge', what might the 
 philosophy of D be?


fast. safe. reliable. choose any three of 'em.
Oct 15 2017
prev sibling next sibling parent Mark <smarksc gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 16 October 2017 at 00:25:32 UTC, codephantom wrote:

 D's overview page says "It doesn't come with .... an overriding 
 philosophy."

 Is philosophy not important?

 I'd like to argue, that the problem of focusing on getting the 
 job done quickly and reliably, does *not* leave behind 
 maintainable, easy to understand code, but rather it leads to 
 unintended outcomes ...

 If the philosophy of C, is 'the programmer is in charge', what 
 might the philosophy of D be?

 e.g. Maximum precision in expression, perhaps?


It's not very catchy, but I would say "Genercity, productivity 
and performance all at once".
Oct 16 2017
prev sibling next sibling parent qznc <qznc web.de> writes:
On Monday, 16 October 2017 at 00:25:32 UTC, codephantom wrote:

 D's overview page says "It doesn't come with .... an overriding 
 philosophy."

 Is philosophy not important?

 I'd like to argue, that the problem of focusing on getting the 
 job done quickly and reliably, does *not* leave behind 
 maintainable, easy to understand code, but rather it leads to 
 unintended outcomes ...

 If the philosophy of C, is 'the programmer is in charge', what 
 might the philosophy of D be?

 e.g. Maximum precision in expression, perhaps?


The frontpage says "It combines efficiency, control and modeling 
power with safety and programmer productivity."

The three big words are: Convenience, Power, Efficiency.

What are the "philosophies" we are talking about? Probably the 
usual paradigms, like object-oriented, functional, etc. D 
supports them, but none of them is overriding or dominant. 
Maximum safety is another philosophy. D allows you to enhance 
safety ( safe) or diminish it (inline assembly).
Oct 16 2017
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Ali <fakeemail example.com> writes:
On Monday, 16 October 2017 at 00:25:32 UTC, codephantom wrote:

 D's overview page says "It doesn't come with .... an overriding 
 philosophy."


Then this is exactly, its philosophy

Some of the nicer comments I read about D, and one reason why it 
still stand a chance against other more hyped language such as 
Rust ...

is that D doesn't force any style of programming on you,

I understand that some people, like to keep an eye or have a 
view, of the strategic (long term) advantages of a language , and 
there is nothing really wrong with that

But, D ... isn't missing any long term vision, it has many, and 
its makers are lacking in the vision department... D just need 
developers to take advantages of it, on the short term ... to use 
it now

So if I may ... the current philosophy of D enthusiasts should be
"write code, not blogs"
Oct 16 2017
parent XavierAP <n3minis-git yahoo.es> writes:
On Monday, 16 October 2017 at 13:22:12 UTC, Ali wrote:

 So if I may ... the current philosophy of D enthusiasts should 
 be
 "write code, not blogs"


Haha... :)
Oct 18 2017
prev sibling next sibling parent reply skymuse <skymuse7 gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 16 October 2017 at 00:25:32 UTC, codephantom wrote:

 D's overview page says "It doesn't come with .... an overriding 
 philosophy."

 Is philosophy not important?

 I'd like to argue, that the problem of focusing on getting the 
 job done quickly and reliably, does *not* leave behind 
 maintainable, easy to understand code, but rather it leads to 
 unintended outcomes ...

 If the philosophy of C, is 'the programmer is in charge', what 
 might the philosophy of D be?

 e.g. Maximum precision in expression, perhaps?


I believe D not having a philosophy was very important when I 
ported all my projects from python to D. Let me explain.

I had a very important project that I've been using everyday for 
two-three years, written in python, and I grew tired of the 
negative effects of interpreted languages. I needed to take a 
risk and perform a complete rewrite to counter the issues. My new 
language needed to excel in the following categories for the 
rewrite to be successful:  performance, testing, and learning 
curve. The candidates were Rust, Go, Haskell, Swift, and of 
course D.

Rust had a difficult learning curve and it was not easy to port 
Python code to Rust, therefore that language was ignored. Haskell 
stuck to the philosophy of a purely functional language, which 
made the learning curve dramatic and I had to ignore this 
language. Swift seemed to be focus more on cocoa apps over 
command line apps, so I ignored this language as well. This left 
me with Go and D, both languages that solved my requirements. Let 
me tell you why I choose D.

D gave me the freedom to code the way I wanted to, Go forced me 
to think "simply". D gave me every feature possible to solve my 
problem, Go took them away. D allowed me to program in a style 
that matched the problem at hand, Go forced me to follow only one 
style. Are you seeing the pattern? When you religiously follow a 
philosophy, you're limited to only solving problems that play 
well with that philosophy.
Oct 16 2017
parent reply codephantom <me noyb.com> writes:
On Monday, 16 October 2017 at 13:56:34 UTC, skymuse wrote:

 ...Let me tell you why I choose D.

 D gave me the freedom to code the way I wanted to, Go forced me 
 to think "simply". D gave me every feature possible to solve my 
 problem, Go took them away. D allowed me to program in a style 
 that matched the problem at hand, Go forced me to follow only 
 one style. Are you seeing the pattern? When you religiously 
 follow a philosophy, you're limited to only solving problems 
 that play well with that philosophy.


Don't confuse religion and philosophy. One is a dynamic const, 
the other is purely dynamic ;-)

I take it from your story, that one could say the philosophy of 
D, is:

'Do it your way'.

That sounds like a great philosophy! And it certainly fits with 
my understanding of the capabilities of D, and perhaps is 
indicative of the spirit in which D came about ;-)
Oct 16 2017
parent ketmar <ketmar ketmar.no-ip.org> writes:
codephantom wrote:


 I take it from your story, that one could say the philosophy of D, is:

 'Do it your way'.


and "have fun" too. this is important.
Oct 16 2017
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Moritz Maxeiner <moritz ucworks.org> writes:
On Monday, 16 October 2017 at 00:25:32 UTC, codephantom wrote:

 D's overview page says "It doesn't come with .... an overriding 
 philosophy."

 Is philosophy not important?

 I'd like to argue, that the problem of focusing on getting the 
 job done quickly and reliably, does *not* leave behind 
 maintainable, easy to understand code, but rather it leads to 
 unintended outcomes ...

 If the philosophy of C, is 'the programmer is in charge', what 
 might the philosophy of D be?

 e.g. Maximum precision in expression, perhaps?


"Get it done, but also right"
Oct 16 2017
parent reply Andrea Fontana <nospam example.com> writes:
On Monday, 16 October 2017 at 21:04:15 UTC, Moritz Maxeiner wrote:

 "Get it done, but also right"


Just D it
Oct 18 2017
parent reply Ali <fakeemailadress example.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 18 October 2017 at 12:40:07 UTC, Andrea Fontana 
wrote:

 On Monday, 16 October 2017 at 21:04:15 UTC, Moritz Maxeiner 
 wrote:

 "Get it done, but also right"


 Just D it




inspired by the post by satoshi's two cents post
Oct 18 2017
next sibling parent Andrea Fontana <nospam example.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 18 October 2017 at 13:26:52 UTC, Ali wrote:

 On Wednesday, 18 October 2017 at 12:40:07 UTC, Andrea Fontana 
 wrote:

 On Monday, 16 October 2017 at 21:04:15 UTC, Moritz Maxeiner 
 wrote:

 "Get it done, but also right"


 Just D it




 inspired by the post by satoshi's two cents post


And without Microsoft, I hope.
Oct 18 2017
prev sibling parent codephantom <me noyb.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 18 October 2017 at 13:26:52 UTC, Ali wrote:




void main()
{

failure to stderr
}
Oct 19 2017
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Dukc <ajieskola gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 16 October 2017 at 00:25:32 UTC, codephantom wrote:

 Is philosophy not important?


I think that if somebody wants to nail down a philosophy for D, 
the main page puts it well: "The best paradigm is to not impose 
something at the expense of others". I also heard that long ago 
there was a phrase "D is not a religion". I wasn't myself here 
then but it still describes D alot.

Well, I quess other phrases could also be included it, like 
"ultimate performance must be attainable, but if the way for it 
is otherwise undesirable it should be explicit" but the point is 
that D tries to let you to program in any style it technically 
can. With that "technically can" I mean that it does not support 
logic programming for example because it would require too great 
a rework on implementation and language spec.


object-oriented styles, and Python whose philosophy is "there 
should be one, and preferably only one clear way to do a thing". 
C++ and Forth are examples of languages which share that 
philosophy of D.
Oct 17 2017
next sibling parent reply codephantom <me noyb.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 17 October 2017 at 09:24:39 UTC, Dukc wrote:

 On Monday, 16 October 2017 at 00:25:32 UTC, codephantom wrote:

 Is philosophy not important?


 I think that if somebody wants to nail down a philosophy for D, 
 the main page puts it well: "The best paradigm is to not impose 
 something at the expense of others". I also heard that long ago 
 there was a phrase "D is not a religion". I wasn't myself here 
 then but it still describes D alot.

 Well, I quess other phrases could also be included it, like 
 "ultimate performance must be attainable, but if the way for it 
 is otherwise undesirable it should be explicit" but the point 
 is that D tries to let you to program in any style it 
 technically can. With that "technically can" I mean that it 
 does not support logic programming for example because it would 
 require too great a rework on implementation and language spec.


 use object-oriented styles, and Python whose philosophy is 
 "there should be one, and preferably only one clear way to do a 
 thing". C++ and Forth are examples of languages which share 
 that philosophy of D.


Again, philosophy != religion. Why do these terms get confused so 
much?

One tries to make sense of things using 'reason', the other does 
not (i.e religion is based on faith - which you can't reason 
about).

Religion can be imposed, philosophy cannot be imposed - because 
one is always free to reason about it.

The philosophy of unix is to have a minimalist, modular approach 
to software development (even if that's not always the case - 
because it can't be imposed).

The philosophy of C is that the programmer knows best (even if 
that's not always the case - because it can't be imposed).

GPL is more a religion that a philosophy - because it seeks to 
always impose (oops....should I have said that...)

The D language certainly does *not* have a religion, but it does 
have a philosophy....whether it knows it or not...

In my efforts trying to 'make sense' of the D language, I can't 
help but think that its philosophy almost certainly incorporates 
the concept of:

"freedom ~ for programmers".

Hey...perhaps that's it!

(even if that's not always the case - because it can't be 
imposed).
Oct 17 2017
parent Dukc <ajieskola gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 18 October 2017 at 00:05:06 UTC, codephantom wrote:

 Again, philosophy != religion. Why do these terms get confused 
 so much?


I didn't mean they would be. I think that "D is not a religion" 
means that whatever philosophy it has it is not cast in stone. 
Not that it has no philosophy.


philosophy but that does not mean it's the only part. Other 
thinkgs I could think of for example:

-Let the programmer take charge, but make sure he's aware of it 
when doing so.

-In "normal" code, first safety, then correctness, then 
performance, then expressiveness. Allow the user to shuffle this 
order but don't encourage it.

-Don't strive for absolute minimalism, but aim for, in 
Alexandrescus words, "power-to-weight-ratio".
Oct 18 2017
prev sibling parent reply Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= writes:
On Tuesday, 17 October 2017 at 09:24:39 UTC, Dukc wrote:


 use object-oriented styles



Clearly the GC and the standard library skews what you end up 
doing.


 and Python whose philosophy is "there should be one, and 
 preferably only one clear way to do a thing".


Ironically there is a plethora of ways to do the same thing in 
Python, but I guess the StackOverflow discussions tends to be 
about what the proper way is.

So discussions about idiomatic Python is mostly cultural and not 
so much the language itself. There is also quite a bit of 
discussion about what is idiomatic D in these forums. So not all 
that different.



 C++ and Forth are examples of languages which share that 
 philosophy of D.


I don't see how Forth is comparable. Forth is essentially a 
minimalistic VM. So I think Lisp would be a better pairing for 
Forth. Both are at the other side of the spectrum of C++/D.

I don't think there is much of a clear philosophy behind D:

C++ with GC, a slightly less verbose syntax, minus templating and 

different version of templating added. The standard library 
borrows conceptually from C++ and Python.

How is the philosophy different from C++, except the GC which is 
a library feature in C++? The core language design and the 
production backend is essentially the same. D doesn't have enough 
libraries to distinguish itself culturally from the C-family 
either, so…
Oct 18 2017
parent reply Dukc <ajieskola gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 18 October 2017 at 12:25:57 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
Grøstad wrote:


 Clearly the GC and the standard library skews what you end up 
 doing.


Perhaps. Well, contrasted to .Net and JVM standard libraries then?


 Ironically there is a plethora of ways to do the same thing in 
 Python, but I guess the StackOverflow discussions tends to be 
 about what the proper way is.

 So discussions about idiomatic Python is mostly cultural and 
 not so much the language itself. There is also quite a bit of 
 discussion about what is idiomatic D in these forums. So not 
 all that different.


Might be, I have used python hardly at all so can't be sure.


 C++ and Forth are examples of languages which share that 
 philosophy of D.


 I don't see how Forth is comparable. Forth is essentially a 
 minimalistic VM. So I think Lisp would be a better pairing for 
 Forth. Both are at the other side of the spectrum of C++/D.


In most regards they are very different, yes. But the similarity 
is that like C++/D, Forth is designed with many different 
programming styles in mind, instead of paving way primarily for 
one certain way of working. Probably Lisp too but I know too 
little of it to confirm.


 I don't think there is much of a clear philosophy behind D:

 C++ with GC, a slightly less verbose syntax, minus templating 

 slightly different version of templating added. The standard 
 library borrows conceptually from C++ and Python.

 How is the philosophy different from C++, except the GC which 
 is a library feature in C++? The core language design and the 
 production backend is essentially the same. D doesn't have 
 enough libraries to distinguish itself culturally from the 
 C-family either, so…


Of course D is very close philosophically to C++, that's what 
gave it the name in the first place! The main difference is that 
there's no burden of backwards compatibilty with C/C++, and as 
proven it's enough of difference for many.
Oct 19 2017
parent reply Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= writes:
On Thursday, 19 October 2017 at 13:09:25 UTC, Dukc wrote:

 Perhaps. Well, contrasted to .Net and JVM standard libraries 
 then?


When it comes to imperative languages I certainly think the 
libraries/frameworks will discourage some programming styles.

Some parts of the D standard library also assume that you follow 
a particular style. Nothing wrong with it. It is different to 
reason about programs that combine many different styles.

In some ways that has been a problem in C++. Libraries being 
wildly different in style. Which they now try to correct by 
having central guidelines and narrow down the "idiomatic" styles 
in the new additions to the C++ standard library…


 In most regards they are very different, yes. But the 
 similarity is that like C++/D, Forth is designed with many 
 different programming styles in mind, instead of paving way 
 primarily for one certain way of working.


Hm, I don't see the connection. Forth was designed to run on an 
8-bit CPU, basically providing a simple memory-compact 
representation for controlling hardware. I think Forth encourages 
a rather peculiar way of programming, but maybe you are thinking 
about some modern dialect.


 Of course D is very close philosophically to C++, that's what 
 gave it the name in the first place! The main difference is 
 that there's no burden of backwards compatibilty with C/C++, 
 and as proven it's enough of difference for many.


Actually, I think D has put way too much emphasis on C 
compatibility. That's an area where Rust got something right by 
not trying to be a C superset a priori.
Oct 25 2017
parent codephantom <me noyb.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 October 2017 at 18:12:23 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
Grøstad wrote:

 Actually, I think D has put way too much emphasis on C 
 compatibility. That's an area where Rust got something right by 
 not trying to be a C superset a priori.


Personally, I think D's emphasis on C compatability is one of its 
primary strengths.

C still rules the world, and does so for a good reason. 
Programmers like the freedom that C provides. Systems programming 
languages need the freedom that C provides. Many 'new' languages 
simply wan't to take it away. They just don't get it.

The only reason I like D, is because it doesn't focus on 
jettisoning the freedom of C, but rather offers you ways to do C 
like stuff, safer and better...and throws in a lot more 
too...it's not an easy balance to get, but it does it really well.

It is essentially the C++ we should have had.

The world needs D, much more than it needs Rust.( the writing is 
already on the wall for Rust .. IMHO).

I notice that D is not even listed on stack overflows 2017 
'developers most loved languages':

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted

It's not because programmers don't like it. They just don't know 
about it..yet ;-)

Once the word really gets out though, it will be D's ecosystem 
that will decide its path forward...
Oct 25 2017
prev sibling parent Tony <tonytdominguez aol.com> writes:
Combine C and Java.
Oct 23 2017