Andrei Alexandrescu's AMA on IAmA reddit (C++ and D are some topics)

By Vasudev Ram

Just saw this today via a link while browsing articles about DLang (the D Language):

Andrei Alexandrescu's AMA on IAmA reddit

It starts off like this:

[ I am a member of Facebook's HHVM team, a C++ and D pundit, and a Machine Learning guy. Ask me anything!

Background:
My name is Andrei Alexandrescu. I've been a Research Scientist at Facebook for almost four years, during which I've worked on various projects mainly around Machine Learning and systems programming. In January I joined the HHVM project, which aims at improving the productivity and performance of PHP on Facebook's server infrastructure.
I've also written a couple of books: Modern C++ Design, C++ Coding Standards (together with Herb Sutter), and The D Programming Language, as well as some papers and articles. Some of my talks are on video (this is the most recent).
Looking forward to answering your questions! ]

I read part of the thread (so far); there are some interesting questions and answers in it, about both C++ and D (and maybe some other stuff I haven't seen yet). One such interesting point was this, where, in reply to a question, he says he likes to brag about inventing D's scope statement :-)

Some excerpts below:

[
chefox 17 points 3 years ago
What's the biggest lesson learned from D that you wish other languages would apply?

andralex 36 points 3 years ago
The scope statement. It's rare that I enjoy bragging about something, but I do like to brag that I invented a new control flow statement (which is awesome because they're so few!).
I think many languages implement some form of deferred execution, but most miss the point - Lisp's with-open-file, Java's try/finally, Go's defer, C#'s using are all sorely wanting.
]

Another one:

[ ... We have had an incredible time with compile-time evaluation in D for years, and I'm glad C++ "stole" that idea. ... ]

Another:

[
miotatsu 29 points 3 years ago
what has been your happiest moment with programming?

andralex 54 points 3 years ago

I remember moments when I'd run a little program again and again with slightly different inputs just to revel in the joy of having done the proper incantations that make the machine do this and that and the other, like a clumsy but loyal genie. I mentioned I wrote this floppy disk formatter - it gave me a lot of joy to be able to tell it the complicated sequence of things I wanted to get done, to see how it ended up carving magnetized trenches into the physical world.

]

Comment about the floppy driver formatter:
[
My first application was a keyboard driver in assembler. It used only 782 bytes of memory as opposed to the default of 4KB. I wrote it because I only had little RAM available.
My second application was a floppy disk formatter written in C++. It formatted 5.25'' floppies to 1.6 MB. Floppies were expensive and I couldn't afford many. Of course, they didn't retain information very well, but long-term retention wasn't at the top of my list :o).
]

About functional programming:
[
amzeratul 11 points 3 years ago
Lots of functional programming features are now available in languages such as C++ and D - what do you think are some of the functional features that we'll see incorporated in languages such as those over the next decade or two?

andralex[S] 17 points 3 years ago
There's talk about purity in C++, but beyond that I'm not sure whether there are plans for major FP-related additions.
Of the usual suspects present in FP languages, D notably misses pattern matching. It is in tension with OOP-style (first match vs. best match), and I'm not sure whether or not it's a fundamental feature of functional style. There are no plans to add such at this time.
]

[
p0nce 9 points 3 years ago
How much more productive do you think D can really be if adopted at C++ scale? Me and other enthusiasts I know are heavily biased by our positive solo experiences with it.

andralex[S] 10 points 3 years ago
Productivity and its variations are difficult to measure. Build speeds alone, at one order of magnitude speedup, are dramatic enough to exert a change of paradigm. For example, many people say dynamic languages are productive because they have the "right" execution model - save file, hit Refresh. If actual times for a compiled language drop to the point of offering the same model, I think a whole category of perceptions would change.
One thing I noticed with D is its "plasticity". Once you have a body of code that works in C++, the natural tendency is to be conservative about changing it: unit testing is tenuous, subtle failure scenarios upon changes are legion, not to mention build times etc. In D, it's a lot easier to mold and remold designs are you go because you know you wont be penalized for it.
]

[
Ingrater 10 points 3 years ago
Following the developement of D you get the feeling that way to many developement resources are spend on new features instead of finishing existing ones. For example a lot of work has been put into user defined attributes while other features are unfinished, unstable or not even usable (alias this, shared, export, structs). Whats your opinion on this?

andralex[S] 14 points 3 years ago
I agree that we should focus more on completing, streamlining, and using what we've got. This is happening already - it's been a while since quality has been at the top of our list, and the positive PR has been visibly improving.
Now that we have more resources there is some amount of parallel work we could do, and the mixed blessing with volunteer work is people work on what they find interesting, not necessarily what's best to do at the moment. This has been a challenge, but at the same time a good problem to have.
]

[
jfernand 10 points 3 years ago
Andralex,
No question to ask, but the comment that I carry the D language book with me at all times, and re-read it like it is a novel; I love every line of code I write in D, and the language and its design choices make me a better programmer the more I understand them. D simply makes sense, and it is a shame that it does not have more traction... I am an seasoned C/C++/Perl programmer, and D is in many ways the epitome of the history of languages, in my opinion.

andralex[S] 9 points 3 years ago
Thank you! No worry, we'll figure out the traction issue :o).
]

There's a lot more to the thread, check it out. Here it is again:

Andrei Alexandrescu's AMA on IAmA reddit

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- Vasudev Ram - Online Python training and consulting

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