You realize your criticism of D has nothing to do with the language itself, and everything to do with network effects, and first-to-market effect? Of course D lacks the widespread adoptions of C++, it's a newer language! The same goes for your criticism of Rust.
Yeah, it's basically a catch-22: lang X is not a viable substitute because it isn't mature enough/not mature enough ecosystem, and continually and relentlessly stating and reinforcing this point will just keep discouraging people from adopting (and indirectly improving) these languages, since clearly... there haven't been any languages that have been able to displace C/++, so what's the point.
And, according to Pacabel, even if you manage to break through some niche with these languages, most underlying software (OSs, VMs, etc.) will still be written in C/++. So if you reimplement the whole bottom of the stack with other systems languages, only then can you talk about displacement, apparently. A tall order.
I have an easy counter to Pacabel's argument: Apple used to use PowerPC. Now they're on X86. People used to use 16bits, then 32bits CPUs. Now they use 64bits CPUs. Operating systems have followed, and soon, programs will as well.
My point is, if you can abstract the underlying architecture, you can replace it. It's difficult because most complex abstractions leak, but it has been done in the past. That Javascript virtual machine written in C++ could be re-written in Rust.
So, even if displacement means "you are not even allowed to use C/C++ as a target language", and "you are not even allowed to use OS services written in C/C++", we can still "displace" C and C++. It won't happen any time soon however. I believe we need to wait for something like mainstream FPGAs.
The problem with current processors and C/C++ is, they tend to be optimized for each other. If instead we had something like an FPGA running at desktop speed, programs would be compiled to logic gates instead of being compiled to assembly. This would dig a grave for C++.
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Yeah, it's basically a catch-22: lang X is not a viable substitute because it isn't mature enough/not mature enough ecosystem, and continually and relentlessly stating and reinforcing this point will just keep discouraging people from adopting (and indirectly improving) these languages, since clearly... there haven't been any languages that have been able to displace C/++, so what's the point.
And, according to Pacabel, even if you manage to break through some niche with these languages, most underlying software (OSs, VMs, etc.) will still be written in C/++. So if you reimplement the whole bottom of the stack with other systems languages, only then can you talk about displacement, apparently. A tall order.
I have an easy counter to Pacabel's argument: Apple used to use PowerPC. Now they're on X86. People used to use 16bits, then 32bits CPUs. Now they use 64bits CPUs. Operating systems have followed, and soon, programs will as well.
My point is, if you can abstract the underlying architecture, you can replace it. It's difficult because most complex abstractions leak, but it has been done in the past. That Javascript virtual machine written in C++ could be re-written in Rust.
So, even if displacement means "you are not even allowed to use C/C++ as a target language", and "you are not even allowed to use OS services written in C/C++", we can still "displace" C and C++. It won't happen any time soon however. I believe we need to wait for something like mainstream FPGAs.
The problem with current processors and C/C++ is, they tend to be optimized for each other. If instead we had something like an FPGA running at desktop speed, programs would be compiled to logic gates instead of being compiled to assembly. This would dig a grave for C++.