Linked by Owen Anderson on Mon 19th Apr 2004 05:43 UTC
For years the development scene has been dominated by the C family of languages, primarily C itself and its immediate successor C++. Recent years have given rise to other C-descendents, however, such as Sun's Java and Microsoft's C#.
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The question is: does D (or whatever) excite you so much that you want to get in on the ground floor, as opposed to waiting a year or two? I actively don't like C# (even if it wasn't just another MS marketing gimmick), but I won't complain if I'm eventually forced to use it.
What does D offer? I don't want to give up auto class variables, particularly not for GC which I don't really want anyway. I much prefer Objective-C's retain/release/autorelease to GC: I implemented that in C++ but now I find I don't use it very often.
Combining ".", "->", and "::" into "." sounds cool, but I wouldn't make much effort for it. It's another way C++ makes you think about and understand what you're doing.
The module concept is good, but it can be faked too, w/ a C++ code generator. I like that enough to make an extra effort when portable code or separate headers are needed.
D seems like YA wonder language whose tradeoff is ease of use vs quality of result. Not because C++ itself is better, but because it has a powerful Darwinian effect on its users (and as a survivor, I'm all in favor of that.)