Duck Hunt

(Continuing my thought process for considering a new language)

Nine to five, I hack C++. Not just any C++. Imagine hundreds of thousands of lines of code, spread across dozens of directories in a twisty maze. Make takes from twenty to thirty minutes (that's a parallel make, serial is over an hour), and sometimes fails in odd ways.

The program has to run on about five different compiler/platform environments (Windows, plus various forms of UNIX - including a Sparc).

Over the past few weeks, I've been running into all sorts of nasty C++ problems (weird template problems, compiler mismatches, spaghetti recompilation).

As I've been looking for solutions to the problems on the Internet, the C++ Frequently Questioned Answers keeps coming up.

The guy makes a lot of good points. And I started to wonder, does he have some constructive recommendation (besides, "Don't use C++").

It's called D.

I think, what I'm looking for isn't Python or Ruby to replace Tcl. I need something to replace C++. With features like Python or Ruby (rapid development, functional programming).

That's D.

Things are still a little fresh (spec is rapidly moving, environment issues). But considering that, it is working remarkably well. I mean, C++ is way older, and still has issues!

A good place to start is with the overview.