Anybody here have experience with "D", ( digitalmars )

[TomorrowPlusX]

Basically, there's this language called "D": http://digitalmars.com/d/index.html

It's like a non-******** C++. I LOVE C++, but I also can tell it's broken, in many obvious and many subtle ways. Frankly, I love C++ so much that I hate it. I can't use anything else, because I love templates, operator overloading, etc. But I hate it because so much of it is broken.

D looks like my savior. It's C++ with better syntax, better templates, proper modules ( no headers ), garbage collection -- but you still have RAII! -- etc etc. Frankly, it looks like the bee's knees.

It even has Xcode 2.2 support!

I know I can join the forums there and ask questions about various tidbits, but my question is whether anybody here has any practical experience with it. And what they might have to say about it.

[Najdorf]

Kenta Cho made many awesome games in D & OpenGL

I even think they're opensource: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/index_e.html

[TomorrowPlusX]

Actually, that's exactly how I discovered D.

My main concerns are being able to bind to opengl, openal, and other C libs, like ODE.

[dfmoore]

Yeah, I litterally JUST ran across D today and started reading about it. Not sure I've got my head wrapped around C++ well enough to plunge into D and get my snowglobe shaken. But, I too saw features that were promising... They're still finishing the specs though?

[SwiftCoder]

I have used D regularly on Mac, here are a few of the things I have found:

First, D is no substitute for C++, and likely never will be. Although it has some neat features like garbage collection, it has no support for dynamic libraries, and the lack of stack allocated objects and full operator overloading makes RAII very hard to use (D's built-in auto keyword for this breaks easily). The standard library is anemic, and has no advanced containers or algorithms. XCode integration (as of a couple of months ago), is a hack, and a messy and barely-functional one at that.

The language does show some promise (for instance compilation is 5-10 times as fast as C++), but it needs extensive planning and work before it is ready for primetime, and I don't see the very small community attracting the necessary development talent to accomplish this.