D Programming Language in the real world? [closed]

Question

Is anyone out there using D for real world applications? If so, what are you using it for? I can't seem to find anything big on the web written in D.

Despite the lack of known big users, D seems like a very promissing language to me, and according to TIOBE, it's fairly popular.

Answer 1

I started a ray-traced renderer in D with ldmd2.

http://palaes.rudanium.org/SubSpace/render.php

Answer 2

I use D for a hardware in the loop (HIL) test environment. This is for software tests in the automotive area. D can be used here, because as a system programming language it is possible to be used in real-time programs (IRQ handlers in a linux real-time extension RTAI-LXRT).

With the ongoing port of SWT/JFace I plan to do more and work in D which I would have been done in Java before.

Answer 3

My current work task is a system to translate C# to D. This is as part of a for profit project to develop a software system.

Answer 4

I use D2, the second standard of the version. I wrote real-time applications (3D engine, for instance).

The language gets more and more powerful each day. D is very pragmatic and all the embedded features, especially the metaprogramming paradigm, makes it far over C++, in my opinion. The syntax is clearer, you can use the strength of functional programming through functions such as filter or reduce, and one of the most important feature: you can use all the C libs.

Definitely my favourite language, and I’m pretty sure it will be a spread used language.

Answer 5

I do bioinformatics work in D. For me, the key thing about D is that it takes a very level-headed approach to tradeoffs and recognizes the principle of diminishing returns.

Unlike C++, which adheres rigorously to the zero-overhead principle, D allows features that may have a small performance/space cost if they make the language a lot more usable. These include garbage collection, a monitor object for each class, runtime type info, etc.

Unlike Ruby, Python, PHP, etc, D tries to be almost as fast as C, even if it is less dynamic and slightly more difficult to program in than scripting languages.
The result is a language that is optimal when both development time and execution time matter about equally, which in my field is most of the time.

Similarly, D takes a very level-headed approach to safety vs. flexibility. It assumes that programmers basically know what they're doing, but do make mistakes.

Unlike C and C++, it assumes that you don't want to use pointers, unsafe casts, manual memory management, etc, everywhere in your code, because they're error prone, and assumes that you don't want to sift through multi-page template error messages when you screw up just to use resizable arrays.

Unlike Java and other bondage-and-discipline languages, D assumes that sometimes pointers, unsafe casts, manual memory management, etc. are a necessary evil, and assumes you're smart enough to handle real templates, operator overloading, etc. without writing obfuscated code. It also assumes that you may screw up and access an array out of bounds, but that the programmer knows best what tradeoff should be made between safety and speed in any given situation. Therefore, whether arrays are bounds checked is simply determined by a compiler switch.

Answer 6

I suppose we can read something into the lack of immediate answers to this question and that is that not many/any of the acive stackoverflow responders are using D. I was also a little surprised about the level of its ranking in the TIOBE listing that you link to.

Having said that, Walter Bright has been working on the language for quite a number of years now and I think he has quite a number of `followers' who remember what a good job he did with the Zortech C++ compiler back in the '90s. I also note that the language appears to be leaning towards the functional direction now.