Been a long time since anything new has appeared on the D IDE front. Now, thanks to Jeremie Pelletier, there’s Code Poet. It’s not ready for prime time yet, but if you are in the market for a D IDE it’s certainly something to keep an eye on.
D Bits- Setting Thread Affinity on Windows in D April 3, 2012When working with D's standard library, it is sometimes necessary to work around missing declarations in the core.sys.windows.windows module. It's a fairly big module as is, but it isn't all-inclusive. If you are doing any heavy-duty Windows development, you'll likely want a... […]
- Putting D's Array Slices to Use March 8, 2012I've been working on BorderWatch a little bit every day. My focus has been on getting the ASCII engine, Arthur, into a state that will let me get a game up and running. With the few modules that I've implemented so far, I believe I'm there. One of the D features that has... […]
- BorderWatch March 5, 2012I'm afraid I'm going to be waving goodbye to Dolce. It's been sitting, bit rotting, for a while now. Some time ago I encountered two major issues with my Allegro binding in Derelict 2. One, a random (and I mean... […]
- Compiling Data into a D Executable March 3, 2012I'm supposed to be posting part three of my series on binding D to C. It's going to be boring to write, so I keep putting it off. But I *will* get to it eventually. In the meantime, I wanted to blog about a neat feature of D that I'd sort of forgotten about until I needed it. I'm working on an ASCII-based strategy/simulation game in the.. […]
- Binding D to C Part Two January 31, 2012This is part two of a series on creating bindings to C libraries for the D programming language. In my previous post, I discussed the difference between dynamic and static bindings and some of the considerations to take into account when deciding which way to go. Here in part two,... […]
- Setting Thread Affinity on Windows in D April 3, 2012
People seem to react happily when told about this new IDE, but I do the opposite. I believe that the whole thing is heading in a wrong direction: There are like 3 compilers, 2 (3?) base libraries, several build chains and more IDEs I could count.
IMO, D is still far too young and too unpopular to make the benefits from wide choices more important than drawbacks of the lack of widely accepted standards.
I believe that people should join forces and focus more on actually _finishing_ an IDE and making it fully functional (Descent being my personal favourite, but I don’t insist here), not starting new projects again and again.
I see a lot of people who have ‘concerns’ about D’s adoption rate, the state of libraries, the number of IDEs, and so on. All that doom and gloom. And I’ve been seeing it for years. But in my view, both the language and the community have come a long way. D has more mindshare now than it used to and new people are coming along all the time. Those who like it and can use it, do. Those who don’t gripe that one thing or another is missing and move on. And some people stay on, get frustrated about one thing or another, and look for greener pastures. Such is the way of life.
So I say, if you like D and use it, then keep using it. If you can’t use it professionally or don’t have any of your own projects, then contribute to an existing one. There’s nothing wrong with having multiple IDE projects out there. People can find one they like and pitch in (not necessarily coding, but with bug reports, feedback, whatever). Those projects that can gain and keep momentum will live, those that can’t will die. Meanwhile, D marches on.
D has a grassroots community, comprised of people from a variety of backgrounds with a variety of interests who use it happily. There’s not *just one* IDE project, or *just one* GUI, or *just one* compiler that everyone is going to love. Time is limited and life is short. People should direct their efforts where they want.
Personally, I don’t care one way or another about any of the IDEs. No matter how many I try to use, I always come back to Crimson Editor. I can’t live without NetBeans or Eclipse when I do Java, but for D my needs are simple. I’ve found my niche in terms of tools and libraries and that’s where I focus my time and energy.