I've just started learning "D Programming". I'd like to deploy my programs on an iPhone. which has me wondering; is is possible to develop for a Mac or iPhone using D?. I'd like the application to be completely written D or at least minimal objective-c. Am I starting a hopeless battle by choosing D over the other mainstream languages (c/c++/java/objective-c/c#)?
+4
A:
You won't be able to do D Programming Language on the iPhone.
On Mac OS though, you can use GCC to compile your D code.
Pablo Santa Cruz
2009-12-09 10:58:32
Oh my goodness, I don't understand why new compiler designers are not taking it seriously to make developers life easier. I read somewhere, D is designed by experiences of practical problems usually developer face. Anyway, Thanks to taking time to explain it to me.
Terry
2009-12-09 11:07:30
It's theoretically possible, but someone has to do the job of creating and maintaining bindings to iPhone and OS X libraries, as well as a compiler capable of generating code for the said architecture (there's the GDC compiler based on GCC, but it has no active maintainer at the moment).
CyberShadow
2009-12-09 11:40:34
Compiler engineers, like the rest of us, have only finite resources of time and money. They aren't going to drop everything and add a new language simply because it's new. Besides, when it comes to making developers' lives easier, I'd much rather have more capable, easy-to-access frameworks than a "better" language. See also: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/435990/why-do-programmers-love-hate-objective-c
Brad Larson
2009-12-09 13:42:07
D is just one of the latest in a long line of nifty new languages which are supposed to make our lives easier. There are hundreds of languages only a handful of which are used by more than 1% of all programmers. Every year dozens of new languages are put forward but only a handful every decade ever turn out to be successful. If you're just starting out, you should learn the tried and true and leave the experimental languages to people who've seen a lot of languages come and go over the years.
TechZen
2009-12-09 14:31:24
@TechZen, I agree with you and hope we're both wrong. D 2.0 brings some serious firepower the language wars, addressing complicated issues like: easier concurrency, java/c# and C++ style resource management, c++ strength templates manageable syntax, etc. My one hope is that with big name backers like Andrei Alexandrescu, and Walter Bright D will have better than average chance at success.
caspin
2010-09-03 21:11:13
I don't think its a matter of "backing" but of real world, immediate utility. The most widely used languages are not those that are well designed to handle specific problems but those that are relatively minimalistic, highly adaptable and capable of easy evolution. C and Perl are good examples of very ugly and easy to screw up languages that nevertheless dominate their domains because of their ability to evolve into almost any niche. Successful languages usually start out as ad hoc tools that evolve overtime into market share monsters.
TechZen
2010-09-04 15:56:27