• John Reimer (47/47) Mar 12 2003 Since I'm fairly new to this list and I've already posted a couple of it...
• Bill Cox (29/89) Mar 12 2003 Sure.
• John Reimer (12/12) Mar 12 2003 Thanks Bill,
• Ben Woodhead (26/26) Mar 12 2003 Hello John..
• John Reimer (17/34) Mar 13 2003 Programming,
• Jonathan Andrew (21/21) Mar 12 2003 Hey everybody,
• Russ Lewis (19/33) Mar 13 2003 Cool! I'm Russ Lewis.
• Jonathan Andrew (4/37) Mar 13 2003 No actually I'm the guy in room 206C at ECE, I've probably changed out p...
• Daniel Yokomiso (34/67) Mar 14 2003 I'm Daniel Yokomiso.
• John Reimer (19/30) Mar 13 2003 D at
• Sean L. Palmer (15/15) Mar 12 2003 I'm Sean Palmer, I'm 33 years old, and I'm a Lead Technical Programmer h...
• Ilya Minkov (47/47) Mar 14 2003 Okay. I hate speaking about myself, but since others do it as well...
• Carlos Santander B. (26/26) Mar 15 2003 Maybe I should also join the gang...
• Antti =?iso-8859-1?Q?Syk=E4ri?= (32/32) Mar 16 2003 Hi, I'm Antti Sykäri.
• Dan Liebgold (22/22) Mar 17 2003 Ok I'll pitch in my story...
• Luna Kid (35/35) Mar 17 2003 (Well, I started by considering this very thread a bit weird,
• John Reimer (23/29) Mar 17 2003 Heh, heh, got you too, did it. Well, yes it is a bit weird for newsgrou...
• Walter (7/17) Apr 24 2003 newsgroups,
• Walter (3/9) Apr 24 2003 He's got a better marketing department .
• Jon Allen (56/56) Mar 19 2003 Name: Jon Allen (duh)
• Walter (3/7) Apr 03 2003 I understand :-)
• Luna Kid (19/26) Apr 03 2003 taste)
• Karl Bochert (3/10) Apr 06 2003 Tried http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html ?
• Luna Kid (5/13) Apr 06 2003 Thanks Karl, I've just downloaded it and giving a try...
• Luna Kid (29/32) Apr 06 2003 I downloaded the beta, and to my pleasure, I found in
• Andy Friesen (3/16) Apr 06 2003 By the by, here's a syntax highlighting config file for SciTE/D:
• Luna Kid (9/13) Apr 06 2003 What exactly is called "folding" here? (Please forgive
• Luna Kid (2/3) Apr 06 2003 OK, Scintilla -- another thing to forgive... ;)
• Andy Friesen (4/26) Apr 06 2003 arg. The domain seems to be messed up. Hopefully it'll be fixed soon.
• Walter (5/8) Apr 24 2003 Oh, I think every real programmer takes a crack at writing their own edi...
• Burton Radons (9/9) Mar 21 2003 23, amateur programmer, little bit of contract work five years ago.
• John Reimer (8/8) Mar 22 2003 Thanks Burton,
• Matthew Wilson (193/240) Mar 21 2003 John, you must be careful what you wish for!! Here goes:
• John Reimer (4/5) Mar 22 2003 :-)
• Walter (5/12) Mar 24 2003 It's the people who participate here who've made this forum what it is. ...

"John Reimer" <jjreimer telus.net> writes:

Since I'm fairly new to this list and I've already posted a couple of items,
I figured it would be it might be couteous to introduce myself a little.
I'm hoping this might encourage others to do the same.  It might give
readers an idea of the people involved in this list, their backgrounds, and
the influence their ideas may have on the D language.  I know who Walter is,
of course :-).

From what I can see, there are  people from both academica and industry
involved here.  Perhaps quite a few novices to programming/computer science
also exist.  Historically, I believe, academia and industry have been
somewhat at odds as to what programming methods/languages are used for best
practice in various situations.  An example perhaps would be academia's
strong support for functional languages, and industry programmer's general
repugnance of those languages types.  It would be useful therefore to see
the backgrounds of people on this list, not to start a war, but to see the
influences and interest.  My involvement is quite benign as I don't classify
as either of these groups.  Walter, it seems, would classify as an industry
level language designer, who seems to implement language features that are
from the a very practical experience point of view.  Naturally, a lot of
ideas are shared by both groups.

My introduciton:

Age:      27

Occupation:
    Paramedic (believe it or not; and don't really know how it happened :-)

Country:
    Canada

Studies:
    Part time student in Electronics Engineering degree program
    1 year of computer science (which amounts to not much I'm afraid)

Background:

I've been interested in computers and languages probably for 12 years,
programming off and on during that time. Initially learning BASIC and 6502
assembler on the C64 at 15,  I went on to study and use C at the age of 17
and programmed several "small" projects and libraries.  I'm certainly far
from obtaining any "expert" level of knowledge or experience despite that
amount of time (since it has never been a profession for me).  Nonetheless
I've studied independently several languages, including several in the
imperative, functional, and OO language paradigms.  I'm currently enjoying
applying programming ideas to electronics circuit design and analysis,
albeit at a fairly trivial level.  I also enjoy math and its application in
computer languages.  Add to that a dream to learn compiler and OS design
techniques, with a touch of 3D graphics :-) (dream on).

If anyone is brave enough as I am to offer some sort of introductory piece,
I think many would appreciate it and find it interesting.  There appears to
be a lot of bright minds on here with experience enough to easily render
mine embarassing :-).

Thanks,

John

Bill Cox <bill viasic.com> writes:

John Reimer wrote:
 Since I'm fairly new to this list and I've already posted a couple of items,
 I figured it would be it might be couteous to introduce myself a little.
 I'm hoping this might encourage others to do the same.  It might give
 readers an idea of the people involved in this list, their backgrounds, and
 the influence their ideas may have on the D language.  I know who Walter is,
 of course :-).
 
 From what I can see, there are  people from both academica and industry
 involved here.  Perhaps quite a few novices to programming/computer science
 also exist.  Historically, I believe, academia and industry have been
 somewhat at odds as to what programming methods/languages are used for best
 practice in various situations.  An example perhaps would be academia's
 strong support for functional languages, and industry programmer's general
 repugnance of those languages types.  It would be useful therefore to see
 the backgrounds of people on this list, not to start a war, but to see the
 influences and interest.  My involvement is quite benign as I don't classify
 as either of these groups.  Walter, it seems, would classify as an industry
 level language designer, who seems to implement language features that are
 from the a very practical experience point of view.  Naturally, a lot of
 ideas are shared by both groups.
 
 My introduciton:
 
 Age:      27
 
 Occupation:
     Paramedic (believe it or not; and don't really know how it happened :-)
 
 Country:
     Canada
 
 Studies:
     Part time student in Electronics Engineering degree program
     1 year of computer science (which amounts to not much I'm afraid)
 
 Background:
 
 I've been interested in computers and languages probably for 12 years,
 programming off and on during that time. Initially learning BASIC and 6502
 assembler on the C64 at 15,  I went on to study and use C at the age of 17
 and programmed several "small" projects and libraries.  I'm certainly far
 from obtaining any "expert" level of knowledge or experience despite that
 amount of time (since it has never been a profession for me).  Nonetheless
 I've studied independently several languages, including several in the
 imperative, functional, and OO language paradigms.  I'm currently enjoying
 applying programming ideas to electronics circuit design and analysis,
 albeit at a fairly trivial level.  I also enjoy math and its application in
 computer languages.  Add to that a dream to learn compiler and OS design
 techniques, with a touch of 3D graphics :-) (dream on).
 
 If anyone is brave enough as I am to offer some sort of introductory piece,
 I think many would appreciate it and find it interesting.  There appears to
 be a lot of bright minds on here with experience enough to easily render
 mine embarassing :-).
 
 Thanks,
 
 John
 
 

Sure.

Age: 39

Current residence: Chapel Hill, NC

Studies: B.S. EECS UC Berkeley, 1986

Job history:

Lockheed Martin, Fortran programmer 1981-1982 (I don't normally list it, 
but I mentioned it earlier)

National Semiconductor analog group 1986-1988, motion controller work

HP cpu design group (PN-10, Spectrum processor) 1988-1989, mostly 
verification

QuickLogic 1990-1996.  Place and route algorithms, etc.

Synplicity 1996-1999.  Synthesis algorithms, specifically tech-mapping 
and schematic generation

1999-present.  CTO and founder of a small struggling company, ViASIC. 
We're still here after 2002, so we must be doing something right. 
Focused on high-end ASIC router and one-mask gate arrays and tools.

Languages have been a hobby of mine since high school.  Wrote a Forth 
interpeter in 1983.  A Prolog interprete in 1985 (in Lisp, like all the 
rest of us).  A Scheme interpreter in 1986.  Another Scheme interpreter 
for QuickLogic in 1992.  A Basic interpreter for QuickLogic in 1993 (to 
replace Scheme... FPGA designers hated it).  A custom language compiler 
(translator to C) so the TymeNet guys at MCI could use it to verify a 
new implementation of their server software.  Most receintly, a nice 
little compiler for a simple language to test out combinations of things 
I've wanted for a while.  Also wrote first version of DataDraw, a code 
generator mostly used for adding OO programming to C in a manner more 
consistent with design needs in EDA.

Bill

"John Reimer" <jjreimer telus.net> writes:

Thanks Bill,

Great writeup.  As far as language interpreters go, the most I ever did was
a 6510 simulator/emulator in C++ for windows (a fairly simple endeavor
compared to real languages).  It was to be part of a OOP designed computer
emulator that never came into fruition due to my getting overwelmed with
some complicated C++ semantics (ie, I couldn't figure out how to implement
certain features in OOP). I think it was too big of a project for me as a
C++ novice.  Part of my problem was the design, which goes to show how
important that step is.  I was still happy about the partial success and the
fact that it actually worked :-).

Thanks for the intro,

John

"Ben Woodhead" <zander echotech.ca> writes:

Hello John..

Thanks for the introduction. I usually like to do this type of thing but I
am also quite new to the list and I hadn't got to it.. Anyway.

My name is Ben Woodhead.
Age 26
Location: Ontario, Canada (resently moved from PEI).

Started programming at age 13 when I wrote a BBS game called Vampire for my
BBS. The programming language i used was pascal, I stopped that after about
2 or 3 years, mostly when the internet became a big thing.

I went to Holland College in PEI to study Business Application Programming,
there I spent time learning Power Builder and Higher languages like that. I
ended up spending a lot of time working on a vax and later became an System
Adminstrator for various machines such as Linux, Vax, Sun or HP unix, VOS,
PDP11 and what ever else you can think of.

After that I spent some time adminining Linux servers and developing web
apps for goverment projects. I am still developing web apps to keep some
money coming in while I devote time to my real goal. The one thing that has
been on my mind since I started in computer and the reason I moved half way
accross canada. To become a game developer.

So I am taking courses from the game institute and evaluating D for game
engine development. There are a lot of advantages to using D, but early
adopting usually means pain, and I am already getting some of that
converting gluts header files to do some testing..

Thats it, thats all.
Later, Ben

ps. Karate is the other big think.

"John Reimer" <jjreimer telus.net> writes:

 My name is Ben Woodhead.
 Age 26
 Location: Ontario, Canada (resently moved from PEI).

Ah ha, another Canadian.  I knew they'd be around here somewhere.  Nice to
know :-).

 I went to Holland College in PEI to study Business Application

Programming,
 there I spent time learning Power Builder and Higher languages like that.

I
 ended up spending a lot of time working on a vax and later became an

System
 Adminstrator for various machines such as Linux, Vax, Sun or HP unix, VOS,
 PDP11 and what ever else you can think of.

Wow! They even had the old PDP11 there? As for the Vax system, I've played
with it during my college days too.  I didn't like it at all :-P.  Not from
the user point of view anyway.

 After that I spent some time adminining Linux servers and developing web
 apps for goverment projects. I am still developing web apps to keep some
 money coming in while I devote time to my real goal. The one thing that

has
 been on my mind since I started in computer and the reason I moved half

way
 accross canada. To become a game developer.

Yeah, there is something alluring about game development; don't know what it
is ;-).  I wish you the best in that endeavor.

 So I am taking courses from the game institute and evaluating D for game
 engine development. There are a lot of advantages to using D, but early
 adopting usually means pain, and I am already getting some of that
 converting gluts header files to do some testing..

Well, D really appears to have plenty of potential in those areas too.  But
as you say, there are still the growing pains due to the newness of the
language.

Thanks for responding,

John

Jonathan Andrew <Jonathan_member pathlink.com> writes:

Hey everybody,

Nice to meet you!

I'm Jon Andrew (pretty obvious!)
Age: 20
Location: Tucson AZ

Started programming when I took a high school class in QBASIC, mostly
fun graphics programs and using "BEEP", "SOUND", and "PLAY" to annoy 
the teacher. =)

Went on to learn Visual Basic, C, and microcontroller assembly on things 
like PICs, currently trying to wrap up my degree in computer engineering at
UofA, and avoid being brainwashed by the OOP-nazis in the CS department! 
I'm a student admin on some solaris and windows machines in the lab, mostly
solaris though, which sadly cuts down on a lot of time I have to play with D at
work, so I spend a lot of time lurking around here, trying not to embarass
myself too badly.

I was helping out with the GCC front-end project for a while, but unfortunately
the other guys working on the project got really busy, and my knowledge about
compilers is too limited to really get much done by myself. I think its a great
goal though, and I look forward to helping out again when things pick up again.

Nice to meet you guys!
-Jon

Russ Lewis <spamhole-2001-07-16 deming-os.org> writes:

Jonathan Andrew wrote:

 I'm Jon Andrew (pretty obvious!)
 Age: 20
 Location: Tucson AZ

Cool!  I'm Russ Lewis.
Age: 25
Location: Tucson, AZ

BS, Computer Engineering, U of Arizona
Currently: Computer Programmer for IBM

I'm interested in almost all things to do with computers.  My work is currently
on
what we call "MidRange Storage," which means both file and block storage (i.e.
both
NAS and SAN) in the midmarket (just below enterprise).

However, personally, I love to work on far more than that and hope, someday, to
be
working for IBM Research.

 Went on to learn Visual Basic, C, and microcontroller assembly on things
 like PICs, currently trying to wrap up my degree in computer engineering at
 UofA, and avoid being brainwashed by the OOP-nazis in the CS department!
 I'm a student admin on some solaris and windows machines in the lab, mostly
 solaris though, which sadly cuts down on a lot of time I have to play with D at
 work, so I spend a lot of time lurking around here, trying not to embarass
 myself too badly.

The lab in Gould-Simpson, then?  Or a different one?

 I was helping out with the GCC front-end project for a while, but unfortunately
 the other guys working on the project got really busy, and my knowledge about
 compilers is too limited to really get much done by myself. I think its a great
 goal though, and I look forward to helping out again when things pick up again.

I wonder how hard it would be to port DLI to Solaris.  I haven't tried, but it
would be interesting...

--
The Villagers are Online! http://villagersonline.com

.[ (the fox.(quick,brown)) jumped.over(the dog.lazy) ]
.[ (a version.of(English).(precise.more)) is(possible) ]
?[ you want.to(help(develop(it))) ]

Jonathan Andrew <Jonathan_member pathlink.com> writes:

In article <3E709CF9.5D3082FF deming-os.org>, Russ Lewis says...
Jonathan Andrew wrote:

 I'm Jon Andrew (pretty obvious!)
 Age: 20
 Location: Tucson AZ

Cool!  I'm Russ Lewis.
Age: 25
Location: Tucson, AZ

BS, Computer Engineering, U of Arizona
Currently: Computer Programmer for IBM

I'm interested in almost all things to do with computers.  My work is currently
on
what we call "MidRange Storage," which means both file and block storage (i.e.
both
NAS and SAN) in the midmarket (just below enterprise).

However, personally, I love to work on far more than that and hope, someday, to
be
working for IBM Research.

 Went on to learn Visual Basic, C, and microcontroller assembly on things
 like PICs, currently trying to wrap up my degree in computer engineering at
 UofA, and avoid being brainwashed by the OOP-nazis in the CS department!
 I'm a student admin on some solaris and windows machines in the lab, mostly
 solaris though, which sadly cuts down on a lot of time I have to play with D at
 work, so I spend a lot of time lurking around here, trying not to embarass
 myself too badly.

The lab in Gould-Simpson, then?  Or a different one?

No actually I'm the guy in room 206C at ECE, I've probably changed out paper
for you once or twice, depending on when you graduated. Stop by sometime and we
can chat! Nice to know there are some fellow UofA'ers in here!

 I was helping out with the GCC front-end project for a while, but unfortunately
 the other guys working on the project got really busy, and my knowledge about
 compilers is too limited to really get much done by myself. I think its a great
 goal though, and I look forward to helping out again when things pick up again.

I wonder how hard it would be to port DLI to Solaris.  I haven't tried, but it
would be interesting...

--
The Villagers are Online! http://villagersonline.com

.[ (the fox.(quick,brown)) jumped.over(the dog.lazy) ]
.[ (a version.of(English).(precise.more)) is(possible) ]
?[ you want.to(help(develop(it))) ]

"Daniel Yokomiso" <daniel_yokomiso yahoo.com.br> writes:

I'm Daniel Yokomiso.
Age: 23
Location: São Paulo, SP, Brazil

Quit college after 4 years of physics. Currently I'm a Java/J2EE/Project
management techniques consultant.

I'm interested in language/library/ide design and implementation, developing
my own oo functional language (eon).

I'm here trying to make D an efficient and safe language, with high-level
constructs for repetitive tasks, but easy to understand. Someday in the
future my language will provide a compiler generating D code, and this will
be pretty easy to do. To make my job simpler I'm developing some libraries
and tools in D, and perhaps someone else will find them interesting too.
Also I want to share my studies here so we don't end up with some elegant
but inefficient/awkard/unsafe construct because the consequences were
unknown (but some obscure language had them). That's pretty much what I'm
doing here.


"Russ Lewis" <spamhole-2001-07-16 deming-os.org> escreveu na mensagem
news:3E709CF9.5D3082FF deming-os.org...
 Jonathan Andrew wrote:

 I'm Jon Andrew (pretty obvious!)
 Age: 20
 Location: Tucson AZ

 Cool!  I'm Russ Lewis.
 Age: 25
 Location: Tucson, AZ

 BS, Computer Engineering, U of Arizona
 Currently: Computer Programmer for IBM

 I'm interested in almost all things to do with computers.  My work is

currently on
 what we call "MidRange Storage," which means both file and block storage

(i.e. both
 NAS and SAN) in the midmarket (just below enterprise).

 However, personally, I love to work on far more than that and hope,

someday, to be
 working for IBM Research.

 Went on to learn Visual Basic, C, and microcontroller assembly on things
 like PICs, currently trying to wrap up my degree in computer engineering


at
 UofA, and avoid being brainwashed by the OOP-nazis in the CS department!
 I'm a student admin on some solaris and windows machines in the lab,


mostly
 solaris though, which sadly cuts down on a lot of time I have to play


with D at
 work, so I spend a lot of time lurking around here, trying not to


embarass
 myself too badly.

 The lab in Gould-Simpson, then?  Or a different one?

 I was helping out with the GCC front-end project for a while, but


unfortunately
 the other guys working on the project got really busy, and my knowledge


about
 compilers is too limited to really get much done by myself. I think its


a great
 goal though, and I look forward to helping out again when things pick up


again.
 I wonder how hard it would be to port DLI to Solaris.  I haven't tried,

but it
 would be interesting...

 --
 The Villagers are Online! http://villagersonline.com

 .[ (the fox.(quick,brown)) jumped.over(the dog.lazy) ]
 .[ (a version.of(English).(precise.more)) is(possible) ]
 ?[ you want.to(help(develop(it))) ]


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Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
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"John Reimer" <jjreimer telus.net> writes:

 Started programming when I took a high school class in QBASIC, mostly
 fun graphics programs and using "BEEP", "SOUND", and "PLAY" to annoy
 the teacher. =)

Heh, heh. That's one way to do it :-)

 I'm a student admin on some solaris and windows machines in the lab,

mostly
 solaris though, which sadly cuts down on a lot of time I have to play with

D at
 work, so I spend a lot of time lurking around here, trying not to embarass
 myself too badly.

Now I can identify with that statement, except I haven't figured how not to
embarass myself without blocking all outgoing emails ;-).  I figure as long
as I have genuine questions, stupid or not, they're worth asking (well, as
long as I've tried doing my share of the research first, of course).

 I was helping out with the GCC front-end project for a while, but

unfortunately
 the other guys working on the project got really busy, and my knowledge

about
 compilers is too limited to really get much done by myself. I think its a

great
 goal though, and I look forward to helping out again when things pick up

again.

Wow that's a noble attempt, nonetheless.

Compiler/Interpreter/VM design and implementation have always fascinated
me...but they certainly are complicated beasts and require a fairly intense
and careful study.  I have a couple quality books on the subject, and I will
likely take the advice of a knowledgable reader on this list and right a
good, simple interpreter sometime for an educational experience.

Thanks for the intro.

John

"Sean L. Palmer" <seanpalmer directvinternet.com> writes:

I'm Sean Palmer, I'm 33 years old, and I'm a Lead Technical Programmer here
in L.A. at Treyarch, a subdivision of Activision.  I make video games for
home consoles.  Been in the games industry for about 6 years now.  Mostly
self-taught.

I've been programming since I was 13, BASIC/6502 stuff for a few years, then
Pascal, 80x86,  then C, C++.  Tinkered with many other languages.

The extent of my language design experience has been writing a C-like script
language in Pascal for a Win16 terminal emulator software called Telix.  I
made a enhanced version of it for the Win32 version in C++ that never
shipped (M$ started giving away Internet Explorer for free and the bottom
fell out of the market).  I've done a lot of partial designs though.
Bringing them full-term is painful in a non-GC strongly typed language with
weak runtime libraries like C++.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!  ;)

Sean

Ilya Minkov <midiclub 8ung.at> writes:

Okay. I hate speaking about myself, but since others do it as well...
So i have to confess. :)

Age: 20
Location: Munich, Germany.
Moved from Ukraine (that's one of Soviet Union splits, the second 
largest one) a few years ago.

I have just started studying Computer Science at a Technical University 
near Munich.

I can't say i have much experience. I have gotten a Speccy (a computer 
from 1982) as i was 8. That led to some BASIC programming. A few years 
later i have dropped that, in favor of music and fine arts. Which i also 
dropped a couple of years later, and try to learn now.

I came back to programming about 5 years ago. Since we had a large and 
powerful Pascal community in our city, the choice was pretty obvious: 
Delphi. I have tried to do some really large projects and mostly failed. 
It's not the language's fault though.

I also have a bit of experience in followong languages:
  - OCaml. Major language at our university. Interesting. It made me 
interest for language design in general.
  - Python. It's the scripting language used in Blender, a 3D 
application i'll be making a movie with. :)
  - C. I have joined a lame finnish demogroup. Tried to code in C, 
because i thought that this way someone might help me out... I was too 
naive. Though the code is clean, it doesn't work. :( My C knowledge 
seems to be superficial, or i simply can't concentrate on making no 
mistakes. ;( I might port it into D. Or switch to doing things i can do 
better - "art".

I also have a superficial impression of most other languages, including 
but not limited to .... [blah blah blah]

Right now i'm suffering a kind of blockade, i don't program even for 
myself, presumably since i tried to do something serious in C. However, 
i enjoy answering questions too much, and i end up firing up a compiler 
if i think i can track down someone's problem. I'm also an IRC and 
newsgroup addict. :) Well, maybe this blockade is for the best, since i 
have to take some more care of my health.

Except for that, i'm an arrogant arsehole and a paranoid android. I keep 
offending people at any occasion. Just make sure you ignore me if i do. 
;) I'm also very easy to offend. [that's why i hate talking about 
myself!] Nontheless i hope to help the D community with some common 
sense and possibly someday code. I also think to make a language 
compiler of my own, enhancing ObjectPascal to what i need - in parallel 
with helping out with GCC D compiler, if i find some time. Either both 
or none of them. But my primary projects are currently the movie and 
planning the simple integer soundmachine compiler, much like CSound or 
Structural- Audio- Orchestra- Language, but an actually usable 
implementation.

-i.

"Carlos Santander B." <carlos8294 msn.com> writes:

Maybe I should also join the gang...
I'm 20, born, raised and living in Ecuador, right now in Quito. I'm a
university student, studying systems engineering (that'd be computing, I
dunno...). That's pretty much it.
I started with computers when I was 8 or so when my dad taught me Basic.
After like 4 years, I started with QBasic, and that was my first encounter
with structural programming. Then, it was VB time. Two and a half years ago
I started to learn C, and then C++. Last year it was learning like crazy: I
had to learn Delphi, Java, HTML, JScript... And I met D. Well, I never
learnt JScript that well, but I think it counts.
I never liked Windows 3.1, so I learnt DOS the hard way. That's why I like
to open command prompts like crazy, and that's why I like Linux so much. But
I still don't have that many things in Linux to be with it too long. Besides
Windows (3.1, 95, nt 4, 98, me, 2000, xp) and Linux (mandrake 8,9), I don't
have experience with other OS.
I know I don't know tons of things, that's why I often get lost with many
things you say, but I'm always willing to learn. That's the good thing: I
don't know any of my classmates who want to know more. They just want to
finish their career and then get a job that pays good enough. That's it. I
don't think that's a good idea, but I can't fight them.

—————————————————————————
Carlos Santander


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Antti =?iso-8859-1?Q?Syk=E4ri?= <jsykari gamma.hut.fi> writes:

Hi, I'm Antti Sykäri.

Age: 23

Location: Finland

I'm studying computer science at Helsinki University of Technology.
Also working as a coder more or less part-time (or, currently, nearly
full time) at Housemarque, a local game company.

Some background: along the years I've programmed in several languages,
starting from Basic on C-64 and Amiga, a little MC68000 assembly, C,
Java, some Python and then Scheme (our first programming course is held
along the lines of the famous "Structure of Interpretation of Computer
Programs", which obviously affected my thinking to some amount).  I
think that I seriously decided to learn programming when I participated
in a game programming training at the aforementioned company a couple of
years ago. That's also when I learned C++, which has so far been the
language of my choice. Since then I've switched to "Learning mode" and
spent most of my free time reading books about programming, programming
languages, methodologies, and what-you-have. Currently I'm reading about
different computation models (the Mozart/Oz book), generative
programming and metaprogramming (in C++), psychology of programming,
object-oriented software construction (à la Eiffel), and Unix internals.

Unfortunately, combining all this with studies and working doesn't leave
me much free time for projects of my own. (And I still have a strong
feeling that I *should* learn serious functional programming, logic
programming, Common Lisp, and a bunch of other things ...)

Like every other C++ programmer, I've wanted to design a language of my
own to make a more accessible, more powerful and safer language.
Accidentally, this is what lead me to learn about D, which seems to be
the nearest best thing one could imagine at that direction. So I've been
around, occasionally opening my big mouth.

My computing environment preferences lie on the Unix/Linux side, and I'm
naturally looking forward to seeing a full-blown D compiler for Linux.

-Antti

Dan Liebgold <Dan_member pathlink.com> writes:

Ok I'll pitch in my story...

I'm 29, and I'm a game developer. I've been doing the games thing for about 7
years now, so I think I'm stuck with it for awhile. I started programming on the
the Apple II in basic and proceeded to learn C64 basic, IBM PC microsoft basic,
PC assembly language, then a little C.  Through college I did Scheme, C++, and a
little Prolog. 

After college it was straight C++ with some assembly required ;) for a long
time. I dabbled in Java a little here and there, but mostly stuck close to C++.

At my job we use a Lisp hosted development environment with a custom language
and compiler. Our language is an odd hybrid of C, C++, and MIPS assembly dressed
up like Lisp, with some useful Lisp features like macros and automatic memory
management thrown in. And yes, we're a "real" developer; we're 1st party and we
have 45 people working fulltime on the current project.

We do Playstation 2 development so we have need for lots of direct-to-hardware
programming; a significant portion of our codebase looks like driver code. We
also are developing an enormous game world with lots of interesting characters
so we need high level expressivity as well.  Our language bridges the gap fairly
well, but there is certainly room for improvement. 

So that is why I'm interested in D. I see a need for a language than can be more
expressive than C++ without sacrificing the efficiency (or at least the
opportunity for effiency).

Dan

"Luna Kid" <lunakid neuropolis.org> writes:

(Well, I started by considering this very thread a bit weird,
as people rarely introduce themselves in forums like newsgroups
or mailing lists, but now, here I go like "me too"... Umm...)

So, I'm 33, programming for 18 years (started with some
BASIC and Z80 assembly, then C64's 6510, then Pascal, C,
C++, some Java, Tcl, TN-SDL, some Eiffel, Ruby, Lua and
dunnowhat, uhh, of course, xBASE, and even JAM 4GL for a
few weeks, but please don't tell anyone...). I'm also a
game developer at heart, but have no time and money to
actually do what I'm here for...

I have a sick tendency to inadvertently stress languages
to their limits, bringing them to knees before they could
prove me that they are the ones to love... I always seem
to try solving my stupid problems in obscure, unusual ways
(mostly due to lack of patience and proper knowledge of all
the available language features), which makes me probably the
most "war-ridden" but still most inefficient programmer on
this planet, constantly dreaming of "a better language" that
would suddenly match my mindset and style... (As I seem to
be reluctant to match my mind to the available languages.)

One advantage(?) of this constant struggle is that I tend
to learn things the hard way, and see more of the "hidden
stuff" than some of the "luckier" programmers do. (One such
example may be when, during a heavy C++ project 8 years ago
the concept of DbC struck me like a revelation, 2 years
before I heared of Bertrand Meyer or Eiffel at all, so I
can't understand why people find DbC such a big deal and/or
why Mr. Meier takes all the credit instead of me... :) ).

I'm wandering around D now (which I start liking better
for this second try), and also OCaML and LISP, languages
that have somehow managed to dodge my offenses so far...

Cheers,
The Luna Kid
(a.k.a Szabolcs Szász - but ya don't wanna learn a name
like that, do ya?...)

"John Reimer" <jjreimer telus.net> writes:

"Luna Kid" <lunakid neuropolis.org> wrote in message
news:b563m7$2u5r$1 digitaldaemon.com...
 (Well, I started by considering this very thread a bit weird,
 as people rarely introduce themselves in forums like newsgroups
 or mailing lists, but now, here I go like "me too"... Umm...)

Heh, heh, got you too, did it.  Well, yes it is a bit weird for newsgroups,
I guess, considering anonymity seems to be a  key thing in lists.  But I
figured it would be slightly different for this group.  For one, it's on
it's own server; and for two, most of the people here seem to supply their
real names.  That in itself is unusual for a newsgroup.  So my conclusion
was that we have a lot of sincere, earnest individuals here that want to
make something of D.  I figured these same people might not mind revealing
their background which might prove interesting and useful to the list.

So I admit it. I'm guilty.  I started this topic.  :-)
 I'm wandering around D now (which I start liking better
 for this second try), and also OCaML and LISP, languages
 that have somehow managed to dodge my offenses so far...

Interesting to see that a number of people have made references to the
functional language OCaML.  It seems this paradigm has piqued the the
interests of some industry types after all.  I tried this language off and
on over last couple years.  I never got very far into it, but it certainly
seemed impressive.  I'm very interested in the functional paradigm, but,
like others, have found it confoundingly different from the way imperitive
programming languages work. I will stick to spreadsheets for the time being
:-).  Another language that supposed to be good is Concurrent Clean.

Thanks for contributing that, "Luna Kid", despite this being a weird topic
:-).

Later,

John

"Walter" <walter digitalmars.com> writes:

"John Reimer" <jjreimer telus.net> wrote in message
news:b566it$302u$1 digitaldaemon.com...
 "Luna Kid" <lunakid neuropolis.org> wrote in message
 news:b563m7$2u5r$1 digitaldaemon.com...
 Heh, heh, got you too, did it.  Well, yes it is a bit weird for

newsgroups,
 I guess, considering anonymity seems to be a  key thing in lists.  But I
 figured it would be slightly different for this group.  For one, it's on
 it's own server; and for two, most of the people here seem to supply their
 real names.  That in itself is unusual for a newsgroup.  So my conclusion
 was that we have a lot of sincere, earnest individuals here that want to
 make something of D.  I figured these same people might not mind revealing
 their background which might prove interesting and useful to the list.

I tried a couple times to get Google to index this newsgroup, and failed. I
don't try anymore, because I think it is a *good* thing that Google doesn't
index it. You're right about the high quality of this newsgroup and the
posters here, and if it was googled, that may be lost.

"Walter" <walter digitalmars.com> writes:

"Luna Kid" <lunakid neuropolis.org> wrote in message
news:b563m7$2u5r$1 digitaldaemon.com...
 (One such
 example may be when, during a heavy C++ project 8 years ago
 the concept of DbC struck me like a revelation, 2 years
 before I heared of Bertrand Meyer or Eiffel at all, so I
 can't understand why people find DbC such a big deal and/or
 why Mr. Meier takes all the credit instead of me... :) ).

He's got a better marketing department <g>.

"Jon Allen" <jallen minotstateu.edu> writes:

Name: Jon Allen (duh)
Age: 23
Location: Minot, North Dakota
Occupation: undergrad student (double majoring in math and computer science)

I remember the first "program" I ever wrote was a little game on the Apple
IIc involving a string of characters that tested reflexes when the space bar
was held down :-).  This was probably in the first or second grade.  I was
immensely proud of this feat and showed it off to everyone I knew.  Someone
I showed apparently saw some potential there and gave me a book on Applesoft
Basic.  Ever since I've been hooked on programming.  I soon felt cramped by
Basic and began to dabble in Pascal, but never became very proficient in it
because discovered machine language (6502) and started to supplement my
Basic code with it (remember peek and poke?  <shudder>).  Before long I was
writing programs in pure machine language.

When my parents divorced I no longer had a computer in the house, but I
managed to feed my addiction with graphing calculators.  My first was a
Casio, but that wasn't quite powerful enough for me.  When I was fourteen I
got a summer job and bought a TI-85 calculator.  TI-Basic wasn't quite fast
enough for me though, so I learned Z80 assembly (thank god for calc to mac
link cables at my school, otherwise I never would have been able to do
that).  When I was seventeen I got a decently paying job as a computer tech
and used the money to buy an old 486 from one of my friends.  I set out to
learn C++, and bought Visual C++ 4.  For some reason I had a devil of a time
with C's syntax, so I didn't really get too far with the language before I
was introduced to Visual Basic.  VB was pretty neat, and so much easier to
use than the Win32 api.  Fortunately it wasn't very long before I began to
feel extremely cramped by the language.  Mostly I wasn't working with the
language but using frustrating workarounds to make api calls anyhow.  I
started using Visual C++ to write activex backend's for my programs. Then I
needed better setup programs than what was provided with VB, so I started
writing those in C++ too.  By now I was good enough with C++ that there was
no reason to use VB anymore.  This was probably about the time I graduated
high-school.

Ever since C++ has been my language of choice, mostly because I haven't put
in the time to learn anything else.

Right now I'm learning x86 assembly, which, as it turns out, is pretty easy.
Other languages I want to learn whenever I get time is Lisp and Delphi.

When I graduated high school I was the best programmer I knew and didn't
think there was much I could learn from anybody else.  Now I'm a *much*
better programmer than I was then, and fortunately I also realized that
there are actually people who are way better than I am (lots of them even
:-). So last year I finally decided that maybe I could learn something from
college and decided to go back to school.  I currently work as an ASP
"developer" (now I know that I really hate VB) for the school.  Every once
in a while they let me at some "real" work.  The most recent program I wrote
for work was a little port testing thingie designed to test firewalls for
compatibility with some of the software they use (not particularly
challenging, but still fun to write).

For the future I'm leaning towards a career as a professor.

Current project's I want to start on when I get time are:
a decent programmers editor (none of them get it quite right for my taste)
a language of my own design
my own C and D compilers

project's I want to finish before I die:
my own custom os
a decent AI

"Walter" <walter digitalmars.com> writes:

"Jon Allen" <jallen minotstateu.edu> wrote in message
news:b5anom$9eg$1 digitaldaemon.com...
 Current project's I want to start on when I get time are:
 a decent programmers editor (none of them get it quite right for my taste)
 a language of my own design
 my own C and D compilers

I understand :-)

"Luna Kid" <lunakid neuropolis.org> writes:

"Walter" <walter digitalmars.com> wrote in message
news:b6hv1r$icg$1 digitaldaemon.com...
 "Jon Allen" <jallen minotstateu.edu> wrote in message
 news:b5anom$9eg$1 digitaldaemon.com...
 Current project's I want to start on when I get time are:
 a decent programmers editor (none of them get it quite right for my


taste)
 a language of my own design
 my own C and D compilers

 I understand :-)

:)

OK, that either means I can finally stop dreaming of
my own editor, or that everyone needs to write his own,
eventually, no matter what... :)

(BTW, Multi-Edit was quite fine for the old days on
the PC. Now (that I bought it...) it's ugly like hell
and buggier than ever... It's agnoizing. The managers
now try to revive it by attracting old-time hackers
to free workshops to code stuff for it again. It gave
me some hope, but when they never replied to my mail
in this matter -- I lost it again, forever. Now the
new hope to me is in either Jon ;) or D + Lua...)

Has anyone tried NoteTabs seriously (on Windows)? Is
it programmable _fully_? I mean changing built-in
dialog boxes etc., as in Multi-Edit?)

Luna Kid

Karl Bochert <kbochert copper.net> writes:

On Thu, 3 Apr 2003 21:43:55 +0200, "Luna Kid" <lunakid neuropolis.org> wrote:
 
 Has anyone tried NoteTabs seriously (on Windows)? Is
 it programmable _fully_? I mean changing built-in
 dialog boxes etc., as in Multi-Edit?)
 
 Luna Kid
 

Tried http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html ?
Folding, full source, free etc.

"Luna Kid" <lunakid neuropolis.org> writes:

 Has anyone tried NoteTabs seriously (on Windows)? Is
 it programmable _fully_? I mean changing built-in
 dialog boxes etc., as in Multi-Edit?)

 Luna Kid

 Tried http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html ?
 Folding, full source, free etc.

Thanks Karl, I've just downloaded it and giving a try...

(Though seems somewhat hacky C++, perhaps it may be reused
if I go _mad_ and decide to work on an editor myself.)

Cheers,
Sab

"Luna Kid" <lunakid neuropolis.org> writes:

 Tried http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html ?
 Folding, full source, free etc.

 Thanks Karl, I've just downloaded it and giving a try...

I downloaded the beta, and to my pleasure, I found in
the code that it has the (yet undocumented)

    -loadsession:sessionfile

command-line switch! Great! Well, it crashes, though... :)
But here's a fix:

---------------------------------------------------
The problem is that Close is not prepared to have zero
buffers (which is the case at startup).

--- SciTEBuffers.cxx Sat Mar 29 01:06:30 2003
+++ SciTEBuffers-loadsession-fix.cxx Mon Apr 07 05:08:21 2003
   -475,7 +475,7   
 }

 void SciTEBase::Close(bool updateUI, bool loadingSession) {
- bool closingLast;
+ bool closingLast = false;

  if (buffers.size == 1) {
   // With no buffer list, Close means close from MRU
   -486,7 +486,7   
   fullPath[0] = '\0';
   ClearDocument(); //avoid double are-you-sure
   StackMenu(0);
- } else {
+ } else if (buffers.size > 1) {
   if (buffers.current >= 0 && buffers.current < buffers.length) {
    UpdateBuffersCurrent();
    Buffer buff = buffers.buffers[buffers.current];
---------------------------------------------------

Cheers,
Luna Kid

Andy Friesen <andy ikagames.com> writes:

Karl Bochert wrote:
 On Thu, 3 Apr 2003 21:43:55 +0200, "Luna Kid" <lunakid neuropolis.org> wrote:
 
Has anyone tried NoteTabs seriously (on Windows)? Is
it programmable _fully_? I mean changing built-in
dialog boxes etc., as in Multi-Edit?)

Luna Kid

 
 Tried http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html ?
 Folding, full source, free etc.
 
 

By the by, here's a syntax highlighting config file for SciTE/D:

http://ikagames.com/andy/d/dscite.zip

"Luna Kid" <lunakid neuropolis.org> writes:

 Tried http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html ?
 Folding, full source, free etc.


What exactly is called "folding" here? (Please forgive
this to a foreigner... Would it be that collapsing of
text portions?)

BTW, that Scintia has some truly lovely features!

(I just wish it hadn't reimplemented a -- quite suboptimal
-- custom caret instead of using that of the system.)

 By the by, here's a syntax highlighting config file for SciTE/D:

 http://ikagames.com/andy/d/dscite.zip

Dead link, Andy?

Cheers,
Sab

"Luna Kid" <lunakid neuropolis.org> writes:

 BTW, that Scintia ...

OK, Scintilla -- another thing to forgive... ;)

Lunaman

Andy Friesen <andy ikagames.com> writes:

Luna Kid wrote:
Tried http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html ?
Folding, full source, free etc.


 
 
 What exactly is called "folding" here? (Please forgive
 this to a foreigner... Would it be that collapsing of
 text portions?)

Bingo.  Blocks of code, in this context.

 BTW, that Scintia has some truly lovely features!
 
 (I just wish it hadn't reimplemented a -- quite suboptimal
 -- custom caret instead of using that of the system.)
 
 
By the by, here's a syntax highlighting config file for SciTE/D:

http://ikagames.com/andy/d/dscite.zip

 
 
 Dead link, Andy?
 
 Cheers,
 Sab

arg.  The domain seems to be messed up.  Hopefully it'll be fixed soon.

In the meantime, http://65.121.9.11/~tsb/andy/d/dscite.zip should work.

"Walter" <walter digitalmars.com> writes:

"Luna Kid" <lunakid neuropolis.org> wrote in message
news:b6i2n2$l61$1 digitaldaemon.com...
 OK, that either means I can finally stop dreaming of
 my own editor, or that everyone needs to write his own,
 eventually, no matter what... :)

Oh, I think every real programmer takes a crack at writing their own editor
at some point. Sort of a rite of passage <g>. I also think that writing an
editor is a great way to learn programming skills.

Burton Radons <loth users.sourceforge.net> writes:

23, amateur programmer, little bit of contract work five years ago. 
Self-taught, high school drop-out.  Started C when I was twelve (BASICA 
earlier, but like Milhouse, that doesn't count) but don't consider 
myself to have become a C programmer until I was sixteen.

I've picked up an eclectic repertoire of languages since then, but I'd
kept coming back to C because I've little patience for dealing with slow
or bulky languages.  The last language I was in with before D was
Python, with whom I had one of those breakups where it takes a lot of
retrospect to realise how bad the relationship was.

"John Reimer" <jjreimer telus.net> writes:

Thanks Burton,

Nice to hear from one of the groups most prolific of D coders.

Wish you continuing success on Dig.  I look forward to seeing it grow with
D.  I know I'm looking forward to using it.

And hey, don't trash Python, at least it's a better language then BASIC and
great for rapid prototyping work. ;-)

Later,
John

"Matthew Wilson" <dmd synesis.com.au> writes:

John, you must be careful what you wish for!! Here goes:

Age: 34

Country:
  Australia (I'm English, though, a Yorshireman in fact, with all that goes
along with that ...)

Studies:
  First degree in Information Technology (Software Development) in 1992
  PhD in "Photonic Packet Switching Networks" (don't ask!!) in 1995,
including inventing a fully-programmable bursty traffic generating algorithm
(please don't ask how it works, as I can no longer remember)

  For all that I have a good academic record, I am almost a pure picture
thinker, so am stunningly bad at learning. Books are hard to impossible to
digest, acronyms do nothing but confuse, jargon leaves me feeling totally
stupid (recently someone was talking about call-tail optimisation - how do
people remember all these terms?), and I was a total pain to all my teachers
over my 22 years of school as I'd make them explain *everything*! But I
think I'm like lots of programmers, though, in that I can get things in a
snap given just one good simple example. I hope you'll continue to pardon
all my dumb questions, and know that you're helping a confused soul find
some order in his thinking.

S/E background:
  Played around with electronics and computers as a kid - assembly
programming Vic20 & ZX81, building extra memory boards, etc. - but forgot
about all that kind of stuff once I hit 15 and discovered girls, booze and
music.
  Although my PhD work (92-95) was primarily software based - in C++ - I
count my education in programming as beginning in 1995 when I was thrust
into working on embedded ISDN systems, working for a company with 13
products over 4 different platforms. This work included debugging primary
rate ISDN LAN Access Servers, running 127 concurrent tasks, in assembler in
real-time. Looking back, I'm always surprised that I didn't run back to
academia. Also, in this job I got my first taste of Windows and the first
taste of the unpleasant side of the personality-type that is "Programmer". I
had the temerity to ask the one Windows developer in the company about how
one goes about writing GUIs and such, and his response was "It took me two
years to learn how to do this stuff, so you can f--k off". 4 months later I
had his job, and have amassed a modest amount of Windows programming
knowledge since then. This experience was actually very positive, since it
demonstrates that nothing in computing is as hard as you think (though it
always seems so at first), and that people who hoard information in this
game do not profit (not to mention not having any friends).
  Moved to Australia in the beginning of 1997, and got married to an Aussie
later that year. Mrs Fox is utterly ignorant of all things computer, and
quite determined to stay that way. She says she's busy enough raising three
hungry boys, but I point out we've only got two sons ... ?!?
  A few largely unremarkable permanent and contract roles under my belt, I
co-architected (is that a verb) and implemented the back-end to the
Commonwealth Securities online trading site - the busiest transactional
website in the southern hemisphere, apparently - with lots of COM and
custom-marshalling and all that jazz. That stuff's run since mid-1999
without having a single failure (a source of pride) or requiring any
updating (a source of penury).
 Next role involved co-writing an address parsing infrastructure for the
Australian arm for the world's largest marketing database company (based in
the US). In an early exchange with the head software group, based in the US,
myself and the local development leader - also English, but a southerner ...
;) - were told that the US team didn't expect us to be able to create an
Australian version that would run with any efficiency, and just to try our
best. Three weeks later we had designed and implemented a pluggable
architecture and parsing plug-ins which performed quite well, despite our
paucity of skills. It performs more than 20 times as quickly as the
original, and had a parsing match rate of >99.9 (versus ~98% for the
original), and can be readily customised to other countries, addressing
systems, etc. etc. It is now the company's standard architecture.
 In 2001, I worked for the least well-organised company one could possibly
ever imagine. This company had managed to get the contract for internet
banking for one of this country's top banks, and then proceeded to employ a
ridiculous number of uni grads, imported labour, and about 30 "consultants"
from one-of-the-big-five (I couldn't tell you which one, but it has a funny
name) to write the thing. In other words, the many monkeys approach.
Needless to say, this did not work. After 18 months of "work" they were
barely any closer to meeting the original 6 month deadline, and decided to
hire in some experienced contractors to see if they could actually deliver.
I was one of these unfortunate souls, and served as "Software Quality
Manager"; my job was basically to teach them all - from junior to their
"architect" - how to program in Java. Within the first week, half the
contractors left, declaring that they refused to work with such poor
management, intransigent and unskilled developers, lazy support people (man,
I could tell you some stories that'd make your hair curl !!), etc. etc.
Being a stubborn soul, I decided to carry on. Six months later, we had
managed to get the build time down from 4 man days to 40 minutes, get system
logon time from 3 minutes to 4 seconds, and allow 2000 concurrent users
where previously more than 8 had caused the (exceedingly high-powered
multi-processor, massive memory UNIX) server farm down. However, it is the
first (and hopefully last) job where I've had to shout at people, multiple
times a day; where I've worked with people who didn't compile, never mind
test, their code before checking it in, even when told EVERY morning, by
management to do so; where a $200-an-hour consultant (from that big-five
consultancy with the funny name), flown in from Melbourne each Monday and
put up in one of the best hotels in Sydney, deliberately checked in
something syntactically correct but with some shocking semantic problems on
what he thought was his penultimate day because he was leaving, couldn't be
bothered to fix it, didn't want to admit to the enormity of his
incompetence, and wasn't aware that the client's management had decided that
he was doing such a good job that they would bring him back 6 weeks later!
The client's company had won awards world wide in the previous 3-4 years,
but didn't sniff the wind of dot-bomb change, and saw their share price drop
from $600 to $0.12. Though we got the product past the delivery, the bank
was quite aware of what was going on, and it has subsequently been entirely
rewritten by the bank's internal development team. Ridiculously, had the
company done this project successfully, they had all the other banks in Oz
sniffing round, so would have totally cleaned up. Kind of makes you smile, I
guess.
 Since then, I've had other small contracts, including being a COM "expert"
(terrible word - who's really an expert, when it comes down to it?) for a
couple of clients, including a gaming company, and one of a former friend,
who decided to employ me for a substantial amount of work but decided not to
pay me. Cute.

Current efforts:
  Because of the financial impact of the non-paying experience, I had time
and impetus to start to write, and at the beginning of 2002, put out
proposals to a couple of magazines. That's all gone really well - far better
than I expected - and I've had over 30 articles accepted and published for
Windows Developer Magazine and C/C++ User's Journal. It's kind of a cool
irony that I have so much stuff published by WDM; I'm spreading Windows
programming knowledge that I may never have acquired had not my friendly
former co-worker been so "helpful" and spurred me on.
  As well as the article stuff, I'm also writing a book on advanced C++, and
have another couple of book ideas on the boil. Anyone who's had anything to
with writing a book knows just how hard and how long this is, so please
nobody email me asking me when it'll be out; it'll likely not be at least
until first quarter 2004.
  I decided to take a few months off from last September for the writing,
and my non-paying projects (see below), but am currently looking around for
work. However, the job market here is absolutely dead (not that it's vibrant
anywhere). Hence I'm doing bits and bobs for one or two overseas clients -
not that I couldn't use more, if anyone's interested :) - but mainly
focusing on the writing (which doesn't pay v. well, so don't give up your
day jobs, chaps).

Projects:
  STLSoft (http://stlsoft.org/) - a lightweight, cross-platform, C++
template library, and its various technology-oriented sub-projects, COMSTL
(http://comstl.org/), WinSTL (http://winstl.org/), MFCSTL
(http://mfcstl.org/), UNIXSTL (http://unixstl.org/), etc. This all grew out
of my writing an STL-compliant sequence interface over the Win32 FindFile
API (see "Adapting Windows Enumeration Models to STL Iterator Concepts"
http://www.windevnet.com/documents/win0303a/). The whole point of all
STLSoft libraries are to be efficient and lightweight, so they are 100%
header-only, and work with Borland 5.5+, Comeau 4.3.1+, Digital Mars 8.26+,
GCC 2.95+, Intel 6.0+, Metrowerks CodeWarrior 7.0+, Visual C++ 4.2+ and
Watcom 11.0+ compilers, without needing to configure/compile anything, yada
yada. They even discriminate DMC++'s dimishing failures in the namespace
support area, so work with version 8.26 onwards.
  ShellExt.com (http://shellext.com/) - just a place where I make available
various shell extensions that I've written over the years. They always seem
remarkably prosaic to me, but I've had lots of emails from people telling me
my shell extensions have saved them from masses of manual effort. (They also
suggest I should charge for them, but I think that's more than a little
tight.) Please visit and tell me what you think, or make requests for new
ones: I've got a nice friendly wizard, so it doesn't take me much effort to
write new ones.
  CRunTiny - in concert with another WDM regular, Eugene Gershnik, we are
attempting to provide a very lightweight, but (largely) fully-functional
(exceptions, statics, etc. etc.) C-runtime library, initially for Visual C++
(5, 6, 7) and Intel (6, 7), but we'd like to expand it to other compilers,
perhaps even Digital Mars eventually.
  TemplateD (http://templated.org) - just started this, so not done anything
yet, but plan to make a D-equivalent to the various STLSoft projects. I'd
also like to do a D equivalent to ATL, so that COM objects in D is a breeze.
  DProgramming (http://dprogramming.org/) - same deal, but to do with
non-template stuff. Just started, but plan to populate this project with
anything I can't swing Walter into accepting into Phobos. :)
  "The D Journal" (http://thedjournal.com) - started this last year, but
there was too little interest on the news group (although a number of people
did volunteer). Walter and I still have high hopes of resurrecting this, and
I have medium-term ambitions of it being a fully-fledged magazine - akin to
WDM, C/C++ User's Journal, DDJ, etc. - once D itself has matured and
broadened. I hope later this year we may be able to get it going, although
it will likely mean that a few people will have to contribute a
dis-proportionate amount of material in the early stages.

  There're a few other things I'm messing around with from time to time, but
nothing that's likely to see the real-word any time soon, so I'll shut up
about all that now.


Well I'm sure you've all heard more than enough from me. I'd just like to
say what a continuing pleasure the Digital Mars newsgroup is, and what a
stark contrast it is from most of the others I've come across in terms of
tolerance, helpfulness, and plain good humoured human friendship. We not
only have the foremost compiler walter in the business, but he's managed to
engender a forum that contains most of what is good, and precious little of
what is bad, in our business. Thanks to you all.



"John Reimer" <jjreimer telus.net> wrote in message
news:b4op1e$2pbu$1 digitaldaemon.com...
 Since I'm fairly new to this list and I've already posted a couple of

items,
 I figured it would be it might be couteous to introduce myself a little.
 I'm hoping this might encourage others to do the same.  It might give
 readers an idea of the people involved in this list, their backgrounds,

and
 the influence their ideas may have on the D language.  I know who Walter

is,
 of course :-).

 From what I can see, there are  people from both academica and industry
 involved here.  Perhaps quite a few novices to programming/computer

science
 also exist.  Historically, I believe, academia and industry have been
 somewhat at odds as to what programming methods/languages are used for

best
 practice in various situations.  An example perhaps would be academia's
 strong support for functional languages, and industry programmer's general
 repugnance of those languages types.  It would be useful therefore to see
 the backgrounds of people on this list, not to start a war, but to see the
 influences and interest.  My involvement is quite benign as I don't

classify
 as either of these groups.  Walter, it seems, would classify as an

industry
 level language designer, who seems to implement language features that are
 from the a very practical experience point of view.  Naturally, a lot of
 ideas are shared by both groups.

 My introduciton:

 Age:      27

 Occupation:
     Paramedic (believe it or not; and don't really know how it happened

:-)
 Country:
     Canada

 Studies:
     Part time student in Electronics Engineering degree program
     1 year of computer science (which amounts to not much I'm afraid)

 Background:

 I've been interested in computers and languages probably for 12 years,
 programming off and on during that time. Initially learning BASIC and 6502
 assembler on the C64 at 15,  I went on to study and use C at the age of 17
 and programmed several "small" projects and libraries.  I'm certainly far
 from obtaining any "expert" level of knowledge or experience despite that
 amount of time (since it has never been a profession for me).  Nonetheless
 I've studied independently several languages, including several in the
 imperative, functional, and OO language paradigms.  I'm currently enjoying
 applying programming ideas to electronics circuit design and analysis,
 albeit at a fairly trivial level.  I also enjoy math and its application

in
 computer languages.  Add to that a dream to learn compiler and OS design
 techniques, with a touch of 3D graphics :-) (dream on).

 If anyone is brave enough as I am to offer some sort of introductory

piece,
 I think many would appreciate it and find it interesting.  There appears

to
 be a lot of bright minds on here with experience enough to easily render
 mine embarassing :-).

 Thanks,

 John

"John Reimer" <jjreimer telus.net> writes:

 John, you must be careful what you wish for!! Here goes:

:-)

Well, I'm glad you and others decided to humor me on this one.

Thanks for the post.

John

"Walter" <walter digitalmars.com> writes:

 Well I'm sure you've all heard more than enough from me. I'd just like to
 say what a continuing pleasure the Digital Mars newsgroup is, and what a
 stark contrast it is from most of the others I've come across in terms of
 tolerance, helpfulness, and plain good humoured human friendship. We not
 only have the foremost compiler walter in the business, but he's managed

to
 engender a forum that contains most of what is good, and precious little

of
 what is bad, in our business. Thanks to you all.

It's the people who participate here who've made this forum what it is. All
I can say is how pleased I am at the quality of the discussions here. D sure
seems to attract the best of the programmers!