The D Programming Language

[Dave Sill]

In article <225800007 at uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> mcdonald at uxe.cso.uiuc.EDU writes:
>I find it hard to believe that a successor to C is needed or would be
>appreciated.

Yes, C is adequate for most of today's needs.  But it does have its
problems and weaknesses.  If we want to have a language to take its
place tomorrow, we had better start thinking about it today, though.

>I come to this as a former 100% Fortran (and assembler)
>programmer who now uses C about 80 % of the time. C does have a few,
>minor defects (for instance, I will never , ever understand the syntax
>of declarations; I have had a guru make up a huge chart listing dozens of
>them, which I carry in my wallet.) So does every other language.

To varying degrees.  Hopefully D will learn from C, and at least not
repeat the same mistakes.

>C does
>one thing extremely well: convert the heart of the machine operations of
>a byte-addressible, conventional processor (i.e. the PDP11) into a nice
>higher language.

Certainly an appropriate behavior for a systems programming language
designed in the early seventies.  But D should be targeted to a more
general purpose, as C is being used today.  Also, D should be more
adaptable to unconventional processors than C is.  E.g., it should be
more suitable for parallel processing environments.

>It is pleasantly compact, and very full of nice
>shortcuts (e.g. "string"[i] ). If you dislike C , try other languages:
>Fortran, Pascal, Ada ,Modula 2. Me, well , I like C and Fortran and loathe
>the rest.

D would not be for people who dislike C.  It would be for people who
like C but find it lacking by today's standards in certain areas.

>But if a new language is to be designed, and done really well, it
>won't be done by committee. For the perfect example look in comp.lang.fortran
>and read about 88tran, the totally new language with two heads, brought
>to you by X3J3.

We aren't designing D here.  We are pointing out those things lacking
in C that we'd like to see done right in a currently hypothetical
successor.  Of course if somebody wanted to digest our discussions,
design a language based on them, implement a compiler (perhaps based
on GNU C or C++), call it D, and distribute it freely, I wouldn't
complain.

=========
The opinions expressed above are mine.

"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."
					-- Ludwig Wittgenstein