December 18th, 2006

Torben Hagerup visited us at the end of September and at the beginning of October. He told me that they are using the D programming language when developing a graphics package for drawing pictures. This got me curious. Finally, I had time to look at the documentation of the D language. I am impressed. Most extensions and improvements to C++ templates as discussed, for example, in the book by Vandevoorde and Josuttis are already available in D. Probably, these features will never make through the C++ standardization committee.

It will be interesting to see whether the C++ community can strike back and improve the language and its compilers so that we humble programmers would be more productive in our development tasks. Sure, concepts are a step forward, but at this point I am unsure whether I can use them properly---what ever this means---which makes it difficult for me to teach them to others.

In the future, we will definitely move some of our attention from C++ to D and ConceptC++.

Merry Christmas and productive new year!

All rights reserved Jyrki Katajainen.