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Comment by isaiahg | Hacker News Reader

I find carbon and the development of a modern replacement for C++ intriguing to watch. But for the life of me I can’t understand why someone would want this over a more mature language like D

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At least one major reason is "Interoperate with your existing C++ code, from inheritance to templates" (https://github.com/carbon-language/carbon-lang).

D interacts with LLVM via using C++ inheritance and templates although not via their original source to be fair.

N.B. ChatGPT is not a toy in this domain - weird macro? It can reason.

The problem with D is changing direction every couple of years regarding the next big feature that will finally bring the masses into the language, while not quite finishing the last big feature that predated it.

Even Andrei Alexandrescu is back doing C++ at NVidia.

I also don't know if the code I write in D today will compile 20 years from now. A few months ago there was a discussion on the D forums which spilled over here about constant churn due to breaking changes in the language.

The guy who wrote that loves controversy.

I think Google is exploring other options as well, such as Rust. Carbon is a more aggressive experiment with higher risks. They've been very clear about Carbon's experimental status and that users should consider using Rust or something else instead of Carbon if they can use the one right now.

Or Rust.

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