1. D and euphoria
- Posted by mattlewis (admin) Oct 22, 2012
- 1667 views
Forked from Re: Tasks - communication
Considering that the subject of ditching Watcom has been bandied about for a year, and already some effort has been put, into MinGW as compiler;
gcc has been supported since Linux support was added back in...2.something, though I suppose not originally for Windows. Yes, there was effort required to get euphoria ported to 64-bits, and some of this focused on MinGW, though most of the work was applicable to gcc regardless of platform.
considering that a whole thread has been started to vote for ditching Watcom;
considering that you yourself seconded the idea of "D Programming Language's approach" being very good
One cannot escape the logical conclusion that "D Programming Language" would be the correct direction to take.
Sometimes it pays to apply computer logic to day-to-day decision making.
Jim was talking about its approach to sharing data between threads. This is something that we'd like to get into euphoria, and data sharing is one issue. It could also apply to euphoria's cooperative multitasking. However, this is a euphoria language issue that needs to be figured out, and the choice of implementation language for euphoria is a much broader topic that dwarfs any advantage related to D's implementation of sharing data across threads. We often look at other languages when implementing new features in euphoria.
Matt
So the only unsolved questions about which we remain in disagreement
1. Voting for ditching Watcom is not ended;
2. You think "D Programming Language" is vastly different from C, and I don't.
2. A separate thread is required.
A new thread seemed like a good idea to me. 
Matt
2. Re: D and euphoria
- Posted by DerekParnell (admin) Oct 22, 2012
- 1643 views
I like the D Programming Language and I like C.
The effort to replace C with D in Euphoria is enormous as it would require a complete re-write of the Eu runtime and translator code. And that is a lot of lines of code. Then one must do a hell of great job in testing it all. The current Euphoria has been in constant test-mode since 1993 so there are very few bugs remaining. A fresh re-write of Euphoria would but guaranteed to be buggy for years.
Then there is the skill required to code in D, and currently that is not all that high with our current developers, and in fact, even in the D world, expert-level coding skills are rare. Although D is based on C syntax, and C code is meant to be compilable with a D complier, coding in true idiomatic D is nothing like coding in C. There are so many new and fundamentally different paradigms and constructs in D, that a traditional C expert would most likely write terrible D code.
So in short, while possible, and probably a good idea in theory, the practicalities of replacing C with D in Euphoria make it too costly to do.
As a final backbreaking straw, the D language is still in a state of flux and is not settled down yet. There are quite a few deprecated features and library functions that will be removed and replaced with new and as yet unwritten code. The rate of change in D is slow due to the development model it uses. Although there are a number of people writing code, all new and changed code is manually integrated into the base version by one person - Walter Bright, the effective owner of the D programming Language. He is the person who has the final say as to what goes in or out of the language and he has strong views on just about everything. Thus change is slow.
3. Re: D and euphoria
- Posted by EUWX Oct 22, 2012
- 1736 views
I like the D Programming Language and I like C.
The effort to replace C with D in Euphoria is enormous as it would require a complete re-write of the Eu runtime and translator code. And that is a lot of lines of code. Then one must do a hell of great job in testing it all. The current Euphoria has been in constant test-mode since 1993 so there are very few bugs remaining. A fresh re-write of Euphoria would but guaranteed to be buggy for years.
Then there is the skill required to code in D, and currently that is not all that high with our current developers, and in fact, even in the D world, expert-level coding skills are rare. Although D is based on C syntax, and C code is meant to be compilable with a D complier, coding in true idiomatic D is nothing like coding in C. There are so many new and fundamentally different paradigms and constructs in D, that a traditional C expert would most likely write terrible D code.
So in short, while possible, and probably a good idea in theory, the practicalities of replacing C with D in Euphoria make it too costly to do.
As a final backbreaking straw, the D language is still in a state of flux and is not settled down yet. There are quite a few deprecated features and library functions that will be removed and replaced with new and as yet unwritten code. The rate of change in D is slow due to the development model it uses. Although there are a number of people writing code, all new and changed code is manually integrated into the base version by one person - Walter Bright, the effective owner of the D programming Language. He is the person who has the final say as to what goes in or out of the language and he has strong views on just about everything. Thus change is slow.
I am neither a C, nor a D programmer. However, I feel that anybody who can take a quantum jump from GW BASIC to Visual BASIC, from dBase to SQL and Hadoop, should be able to take the earthworm's jump from C to D, particularly if he is adapt in one or the other.
Beyond that, I would suggest you look at Euphoria on the Desktop computer's video processor using CUDA
http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home_new.html and/or
64 CPU Raspberry PI SuperComputer.
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~sjc/raspberrypi/
For those who live in the vicinity of Toronto, these topics are being discussed in the annual Free Software and Open Source Symposium 2012 (25-26 October, 2012) at Seneca College.
http://fsoss.senecac.on.ca/2012/
It seems the registration is closed, but I suppose one can try at the door.
I do agree that these approaches require separate discussion threads and building dedicated teams. However, nothing can be archived by presuming any poster to be a novice when he makes a simple typo. I have treated everybody here as serious programmers, whose typos and apparent lack of understanding is to be overlooked or explained to them.
4. Re: D and euphoria
- Posted by jimcbrown (admin) Oct 22, 2012
- 1621 views
I am neither a C, nor a D programmer. <snip>
Why was it necessary to post this long segment of text twice?
