D Programming Language
D is an object-oriented programming language that is, imperative, object-oriented, and multi-paradigm system programming language. It started off as re-engineered C++ though, over the years, it has been redesigned quite a bit to incorporate features of modern day programming languages like Java, Python, Ruby, and C#. Work began on D in 1999 when Walter Bright started off with improving C++ which lacked few paradigms like OOP and Metaprogramming that were a staple of modern programming languages.
A functional language was created on 2001. However, in 2005 Walter Bright happened to meet Andrei Alexandrescu who was also working on his own programming language (Enki). Both of their programming languages had significant upgrades and it seemed as if they were solving each other’s problems. So they started working together and by 2007, D1 or D version 1.0 was born.
The Importance
Every person that is developing his/her programming language wishes to do something that has never been done before. D is by no means any different…or is it? Modern languages allow you to either write code fast or write fast code. Bringing the two approaches together has been a daunting task. And this is exactly what D has decided to tackle. So it’s been written for simplicity of programming while maintaining a high execution speed.
Anderi boasts of D’s modeling power, to elaborate, this means that programmers can easily replicate real world problems in D. So everything from a high volume transaction problem that banks face to automotive sensors and spark plugs can be replicated in D. So the simplicity allows the programmer to focus on the problem at hand rather than fiddle with all the constraints around approaching a problem.
Key Adopters
1. Facebook
The big blue actually employs Andrei Alexandrescu. Anderi, along with a team of programmers use Hack along with D built some of the programs behind the world’s biggest social network. For example, the program that goes through Facebook’s code in order to find errors was created using D and the same goes for the preprocessor that generates the core code.
2. Sociomatic
Sociopathic is an advertising agency that was recently acquired by Tesco for $200 million dollars and their operation has been created using D.
3. ABA games
A lot of the games released by them make use of D1 which has been declared obsolete as 2012.
4. Remedy Games
They are the guys Max Payne, Max Payne 2, Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, Alan Wake, etc. they have a massive code base that is written in D.
Download D Programming Language.
