How I Came to Write D (2014)

Re:How I Came to Write D (2014) by jnbiche on Sunday June 03, 2018 @11:11PM (#17224284)

Rust's cutting edge compiler is free, for one thing. I love Ada, but Adacore may well have killed any chance it had of being a commercially viable language (its use declines precipitously each year, even in the defense and avionics industries where it used to be strong).

Plus, Rust has a thriving community whereas thanks to Adacore, Ada has a dying one. Community is critical for programming languages.

But otherwise, Ada is a brilliant and ultra safe language whose safety features go far beyond the memory and type safety that Rust features.

It's a shame.

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Re:How I Came to Write D (2014) by pjmlp on Monday June 04, 2018 @04:20AM (#17225614)

If anything Adacore has helped Ada a lot.

It is the only Ada compiler available for free, fully updated to Ada 2012, with all the remaining ones are still on their 90's style prices.

https://www.ptc.com/en/products/developer-tools/objectada

https://www.ghs.com/products/ada_optimizing_compilers.html

https://www.ddci.com/products_score/ (frozen in Ada 95)

Thanks to them Ada has become a regular presence at FOSDEM and is being teached at quite a few European university.

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Re:How I Came to Write D (2014) by abiox on Monday June 04, 2018 @12:36PM (#17229577)

according to wikipedia, their 'free' compiler is GPL without a linking exception. the comparison chart on their page also says it is 'for open source GPL software'.

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Re:How I Came to Write D (2014) by pjmlp on Monday June 04, 2018 @02:04PM (#17230379)

Apparently people keep forgetting without GPL, Linux would never happened.

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Re:How I Came to Write D (2014) by jnbiche on Monday June 04, 2018 @10:17PM (#17234456)

GPL for an OS is I've thing. GPL for a compiler and runtime is entirely another, since only the latter forces any project you create with it too carry the GPL license.

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Re:How I Came to Write D (2014) by pjmlp on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @03:48AM (#17235689)

Ah you mean gcc, the compiler that everyone ignored until Sun started the trend of UNIX vendors to charge for their compilers.

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Re:How I Came to Write D (2014) by jnbiche on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @08:47PM (#17243503)

GPL's runtime isn't GPL, it's got the runtime exception:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception-3.1.en.html

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Re:How I Came to Write D (2014) by jnbiche on Wednesday June 06, 2018 @07:04AM (#17246010)

Sorry, I meant GCC's runtime isn't GPL.

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Re:How I Came to Write D (2014) by CyberDildonics on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @01:05PM (#17239702)

No one is arguing that there is a place for the GPL.

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Re:How I Came to Write D (2014) by rwallace on Monday June 04, 2018 @01:04AM (#17224808)

How did Adacore kill Ada?

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