Digital Mars is a small American software company owned by Walter Bright and based in Vienna, Virginia. It makes C, C++, and D compilers, and associated utilities such as an integrated development environment (IDE) for Windows and DOS, which Digital Mars calls an integrated development and debugging environment (IDDE). The compilers can be downloaded, free of charge, from Digital Mars's web site. Product names changed over time. The C compiler was first named Datalight C compiler, then Zorland C, then Zortech C, then Digital Mars C/C++ compiler. The C++ compiler was first named Zortech C++, then Symantec C++, then Digital Mars C++ (DMC++). The company gained notice in the software development community for creating the D programming language. D resulted from Bright's frustration with the direction of the C++ language and from his experience implementing it. Digital Mars is also notable for having shipped the first commercial C++ compiler for Windows In 2002, Digital Mars released DMDScript, an ECMA-262-compliant JavaScript engine, written in D.

History

In 1988, Zortech was the first C++ compiler to ship for Windows. PC Magazine ran a graphics benchmark, and reported that most executables produced by Zortech ran faster than executables produced by Microsoft C 5.1 and by Watcom C 6.5. Stanley B. Lippman wrote that Zortech was the first C++ compiler to implement return value optimization. Later, the C++ standard required this. In 2023, Mike Engelhardt released a new simulator QSPICE, which uses this compiler on the backend to allow for C++ and Verilog authored behavioral simulation models to be compiled to native code and loaded by the simulation environment.

Reception

In a February 1989 overview of optimizing C compilers, BYTE approved of Zortech C 1.07's $90 price, included IDE, and Microsoft CodeView compatibility. The magazine reported that the software "lacks some of the features of those in the $400 range" but its code often benchmarked better. BYTE concluded that "Zortech does everything that a compiler has to do—at an attractive price".