The D Programming Language

For some reason last night I decided to have a quick look at the D programming language, it's something I've looked at briefly in the past but only in passing and never really with much enthusiasm, not because it's a lousy language but because I just didn't commit the time to having a proper look.

As I had some time off today I figured I would have a slightly more in-depth look at the D language and set up my laptop so I could compile applications. D has two compilers available, the compiler from Digital Mars and the GNU D compiler, as only the latter is in the Ubuntu repositories I opted for installing this which was a simple case of opening a terminal and typing in:

sudo apt-get install gdc

All other dependencies were taken care of and a minute later I can compile D code. Next up was an editor, I wasn't to bothered about a fully fledged IDE as I don't like to use them when I'm learning a language as I prefer to make mistakes and learn from them, but syntax highlighting would be useful as it lets me know I'm on the right lines. To my surprise my favourite Linux text editor, Geany, already comes with D support which is great because Geany also has compile/build/run options from the editor which makes it a very easy editor to work with as you can compile your code without building it and identify errors without leaving the editor. It's probably also worth noting that after a very quick investigation it also turns out the GEdit (the Gnome text editor) has syntax highlighting for D as well and Code::Blocks also has built in support.

Now for the downer, unfortunately because D is still a fairly immature language there are very few tutorials or examples out on the web so it looks like if you want to get into it then it's largely a case of studying the language specification and standard library reference. Althought from doing this it's nice to see so much functionallity in the standard library including such wonders as threading, XML processing, networking as well as standard features expected such as generating hashes (via MD5), regular expressions and string manipulation. Also available through the standard library is support for specific windows and Linux calls which makes it easier to write platform specific code.

There is also under active development a seperate library intended as a replacement for the standard library called Tango which looks promising but it is under active development so doesn't necessarily provide stability of the standard library.

So what makes D so appealing as a language? Well for a start there is the C/C++/Java style syntax which makes it easy for programmers to pick up and read. Not convinced then how about memory management? That's right D utilises a garbage collector for managing memory which means that there is less emphasis on the developer to get it right, although that doesn't mean memory is no longer a concern, for instance variables should still be declared only in the scope for which they are required.

Also of interest is design by contract, this is an interesting concept which I'm going to spend a little longer investigating but essentially it means that when you write a method you can specify a contract which can state something like "If you give me a value which meets these conditions then I will guarantee that I will return a value meeting these conditions". So when a program consumes that method it enters into a contract with the method and if either party violates that contract then the call fails, it seems a little odd at first as you can do this by running checks in code on a methods parameters and return value but with the contract you outline the requirements formally, the intention being that the contract is not broken when the program executes if it does then the program fails and fails hard.

So where does D sit in a world with .Net and Java as the two main programming architectures? Is it a niche language, a hobbyist language or something that should be taken seriously? It's certainly to early to tell how life is going go for D but I hope it goes well, at the moment I would say that it falls into the hobbyist category as it certainly doesn't seem as mature as other languages but it is getting there which is why I don't think it will always stay a hobbyist language. So should it be taken seriously? Well, yes, because D is very much C++ done right and there is still a requirement for compiled langauges instead of ones running in a VM, I am sure there will be those who will recoil in horror at the thought of having a garbage collector managing memory but I think that they work and a good garbage collector can do as good a job as a good programmer who is on the ball with memory management.

I think the future looks promising for D, as long as it doesn't slow down in development and stays relevant then in a few years we may start to see it getting some decent commercial use. I for one will be spending a little more time looking into D and getting to know it.