Years ago I ran into the D language while reading through a Dr. Dobbs magazine. At the time I didn't know a lot about C++ (I still unfortunately don't know a lot of C++) so much of what the author was trying to say about how D was better than C++ was lost on me. Having played with C++ a bit more, and after having more experience with other languages, I can totally see why the D language is so popular. This article probably has the same information that the old Dr. Dobbs article had, but I now understand why people would want to have another implementation of objects in C. I remember having conversations with Eric at juggling about the differences between C++ and Objective C (his favorite) and his unabashed opinion was that writing C++ was much worse than writing Objective C. At the time I didn't understand, because it seemed few were using Objective C, yet everyone and their bother was using C++. Wouldn't that make it the better tool? Now I understand that popular does not ever equate with better. Every time I used C++, I wondered why on Earth someone would ever work this way. C is such a nice language to work in, as you were exposed to what you needed to be exposed to to get things done properly. C++ feels like a giant robot that you can barely control, with duct tape holding the tacked on pieces together, and wire bundles hanging from panels marked "Do not open!". I wonder sometimes if the only reason people still use C++ is because they think so highly of Bjarne Stroustrup. I know when I used it I thought to myself on several occasions "I'm not sure why they did it this way, but they're smarter than me, so maybe I'm missing something". Looking at the D article it's clear to me that I'm not the nly one who thinks that C++ is broken. Heck, when O'Reilly's C++ Cookbook spends significant amounts of ink explaining how to keep the language from falling over on itself (or you, for that matter), there's something wrong.
Anyone know where I can find the D language under Ubuntu Feisty? :)