Ara.T.Howard <Ara.T.Howard / noaa.gov> wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Jul 2005, Martin DeMello wrote:
> 
> > Lothar Scholz <mailinglists / scriptolutions.com> wrote:
> >> Well, tell me where are the alternatives ?
> >>
> >> Show me some for a higher level language that does not have the
> >> gotchas of C++, will work for large projects (SmartEiffel does not
> >> do this well), compiles to native executable, is statically typed,
> >> has a garbage collector and is available on MacOSX,Linux,Win32 ?
> >
> > Erlang and OCaml come to mind (not saying they're as suitable as D for a
> > C++ replacement, but they meet all the criteria above).
> 
> have you used D martin?

I'm just beginning to (two days in, mostly spent discovering that I need
to get the svn version of the gtk bindings in order to get them
compiling with the latest compiler :)) There are a few projects here at
work that are non-critical, but nonetheless have to be compiled to
native code (so Ruby is out); I'm experimenting with D as possibly
offering a large productivity boost over C++. 

I'm slightly worried by the 'beta' status of the language, and by the
fact that the DUI developer says "One thing I learn from D: Never, ever
again invest on a project lead by one person alone!"[1], but as Lothar
says, it's pretty much the best we have. (OCaml was another possibility,
but it requires a significant investment in learning the language, the
code will almost certainly be unmaintainable by anyone else, and its C
interface is not nearly as painless as D's. Also D lets us leverage our
C++ experience.)

martin

[1] http://www.dsource.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=784