Digital Mars is a small

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

software

company A company, abbreviated as co., is a Legal personality, legal entity representing an association of people, whether Natural person, natural, Legal person, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common p ...

owned by

Walter Bright Walter G. Bright is an American computer programmer who created the D programming language, the Zortech C++ compiler, and the ''Empire'' computer game. Early life and education Bright is the son of the United States Air Force pilot Charles D. ...

and based in

Vienna, Virginia Vienna () is a town in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. As of the 2020 U.S. census, Vienna has a population of 16,473. Significantly more people live in ZIP codes with the Vienna postal addresses (22180, 22181, and 22182), bordered approx ...

, that makes C,

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

and D compilers, and associated utilities such as an

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools ...

(IDE) for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

, which Digital Mars terms an integrated development and debugging environment (IDDE). They also distribute the compilers for free on their web site. Over time, the names of these products have changed. The C compiler was first named

Datalight Datalight was a privately held software company specializing in power failsafe and high performance software for preserving data integrity in embedded systems. The company was founded in 1983 by Roy Sherrill, and is headquartered in Bothell, Was ...

C compiler, then Zorland C, then Zortech C, and now ince when?Digital Mars C/C++ compiler. The C++ compiler was first named Zortech C++ (the first commercial C++ compiler for

), then Symantec C++, and now Digital Mars C++ (DMC++). The company has gained notice in the software development community for the

D programming language D, also known as dlang, is a multi-paradigm system programming language created by Walter Bright at Digital Mars and released in 2001. Andrei Alexandrescu joined the design and development effort in 2007. Though it originated as a re-engineer ...

, which was developed in-house and a result of Bright's frustration with the direction of the C++ language and his experience implementing it. In 2002, Digital Mars released DMDScript, an ECMA-262-compliant

JavaScript engine A JavaScript engine is a software component that executes JavaScript code. The first JavaScript engines were mere interpreters, but all relevant modern engines use just-in-time compilation for improved performance. JavaScript engines are typica ...

, written in the D language.

History

In 1988 Zortech C++ was the first C++ compiler to ship for

and the performance of its compiled executables compared favourably against Microsoft C 5.1 and Watcom C 6.5 in a graphics benchmark run by PC Magazine.

Stanley B. Lippman Stanley B. Lippman (7 May 1950 – 31 July 2022) was a computer scientist and author. He is most widely known as an author of the ''C++ Primer'' book, which is currently published as 5th edition. Lippman has also authored the book '' Inside the C ...

described how Zortech C++ was the first compiler to implement

return value optimization In C++ computer programming, copy elision refers to a compiler optimization technique that eliminates unnecessary copying of objects. The C++ language standard generally allows implementations to perform any optimization, provided the resulting pr ...

, a now obligatory optimization for any C++ compiler.

References

External links

* C (programming language) compilers C++ compilers {{Ict-company-stub