www.digitalmars.com         C & C++   DMDScript  

digitalmars.D - Book about D

reply Denton Cockburn <diboss hotmail.com> writes:
Anyone planning a 'proper' book about D?
I'd nominate someone like Andrei, he's got the experience with this stuff.
May 10 2007
next sibling parent Georg Wrede <georg nospam.org> writes:
Denton Cockburn wrote:

 Anyone planning a 'proper' book about D?
 I'd nominate someone like Andrei, he's got the experience with this stuff.


Matthew Wilson at least did plan on writing one. But he's not been 
around here for a while.

I've been planning a book, too. Actually now that there's the fork, and 
some stability of language (at least D 1) is in sight, I'm picking up 
the idea. My book would be a course book on programming, that happens to 
use D, as opposed to a D book as such.

Definitely there's room for several books on D. If Anderi ever writes a 
book on D, it probably could concentrate on advanced topics. And 
somebody could write a book on using D in games programming.
May 10 2007
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Manfred Nowak <svv1999 hotmail.com> writes:
Denton Cockburn wrote


 I'd nominate someone


The probability to have success in terms of money by writing technical 
books is close to zero.

To nominate someone to write a book therefore is like calling someone 
out to be parted from his money.

Nominating Andrei, who declared "if there is one thing that's worse 
than language design by committee, that's got to be language design by 
community", is a type of joke for which we are in the wrong month.

-manfred
May 10 2007
next sibling parent reply Georg Wrede <georg nospam.org> writes:
Manfred Nowak wrote:


 ... [declaring] "if there is one thing that's worse 
 than language design by committee, that's got to be language design by 
 community", is a type of joke for which we are in the wrong month.


It is not a joke. And it definitely is true.

We've been a community, but Walter has designed the language. We may 
have had our say in some things, but ultimately it always was a one 
person language.

Today, I guess Walter and Andrei together design the language. But our 
opinions are still appreciated.
May 10 2007
parent reply Manfred Nowak <svv1999 hotmail.com> writes:
Georg Wrede wrote


 Manfred Nowak wrote:
 

 ... [declaring] "if there is one thing that's worse 
 than language design by committee, that's got to be language
 design by community", is a type of joke for which we are in the
 wrong month. 


 
 It is not a joke. And it definitely is true.


I was talking about my believe, that Andrei wouldn't be delighted by a 
suggestion from a community to stop whatever he is doing now and write 
a technical book, just because that community votes for him.

-manfred
May 10 2007
parent Georg Wrede <georg nospam.org> writes:
Manfred Nowak wrote:

 Georg Wrede wrote

Manfred Nowak wrote:


... [declaring] "if there is one thing that's worse 
than language design by committee, that's got to be language
design by community", is a type of joke for which we are in the
wrong month. 


It is not a joke. And it definitely is true.


 
 I was talking about my believe, that Andrei wouldn't be delighted by a 
 suggestion from a community to stop whatever he is doing now and write 
 a technical book, just because that community votes for him.


Ah, ok.

Neither do I believe he'd do it right now. :-)
May 10 2007
prev sibling parent Bill Baxter <dnewsgroup billbaxter.com> writes:
Manfred Nowak wrote:

 Denton Cockburn wrote
 

 I'd nominate someone


 
 The probability to have success in terms of money by writing technical 
 books is close to zero.
 
 To nominate someone to write a book therefore is like calling someone 
 out to be parted from his money.
 
 Nominating Andrei, who declared "if there is one thing that's worse 
 than language design by committee, that's got to be language design by 
 community", is a type of joke for which we are in the wrong month.
 
 -manfred   


Hah!  Well put sir.  :-)

--bb
May 10 2007
prev sibling next sibling parent Knud Soerensen <4tuu4k002 sneakemail.com> writes:
On Thu, 10 May 2007 15:15:16 +0000, Denton Cockburn wrote:


 Anyone planning a 'proper' book about D?
 I'd nominate someone like Andrei, he's got the experience with this stuff.


There is always 
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/D_Programming

But the more book the better.
May 10 2007
prev sibling next sibling parent 0ffh <spam frankhirsch.net> writes:
Denton Cockburn wrote:

 Anyone planning a 'proper' book about D?
 I'd nominate someone like Andrei, he's got the experience with this stuff.


Well some Manfred Hansen has got together 118 pages, nearly book size already,
but I'm afraid it's in German. Then there's the compilation by Alexander
Klinsky, 227 pages... on DMD 0.61, erhm. The nice and compact "Getting started
with D" weights up one page, maybe a bit /too/ compact to be called a book. :)
Apart from the Wikibooks project, those are all I know of, as of yet.

Regards, Frank
May 10 2007
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Trevor Parscal <trevorparscal hotmail.com> writes:
Denton Cockburn Wrote:


 Anyone planning a 'proper' book about D?
 I'd nominate someone like Andrei, he's got the experience with this stuff.


You mean like paper books...? Eww.
May 10 2007
parent reply =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Anders_F_Bj=F6rklund?= <afb algonet.se> writes:
Trevor Parscal wrote:


 Anyone planning a 'proper' book about D?


 
 You mean like paper books...? Eww.


Nah, these days killing trees is optional
so it would probably rather be a PDF file.

But the book still has to be written first.
(printing HTML specification doesn't count)

--anders
May 10 2007
parent reply Denton Cockburn <diboss hotmail.com> writes:
On Fri, 11 May 2007 08:55:36 +0200, Anders F Björklund wrote:


 Trevor Parscal wrote:
 

 Anyone planning a 'proper' book about D?


 
 You mean like paper books...? Eww.


 
 Nah, these days killing trees is optional
 so it would probably rather be a PDF file.
 
 But the book still has to be written first.
 (printing HTML specification doesn't count)
 
 --anders


Sometimes I do find it funny that they still make paper computing-oriented
books.  Think of all the trees that die doing that.  But I agree, any
decent book, possibly practical example driven.

P.S. For any who knows Lisp, Practical Common Lisp was an amazing book.
Something like that for D would be sweet.
May 16 2007
parent Jason Gilmore <jason apress.com> writes:
Denton Cockburn Wrote:


 On Fri, 11 May 2007 08:55:36 +0200, Anders F Björklund wrote:
 

 Trevor Parscal wrote:
 

 Anyone planning a 'proper' book about D?


 
 You mean like paper books...? Eww.


 
 Nah, these days killing trees is optional
 so it would probably rather be a PDF file.
 
 But the book still has to be written first.
 (printing HTML specification doesn't count)
 
 --anders


 
 Sometimes I do find it funny that they still make paper computing-oriented
 books.  Think of all the trees that die doing that.  But I agree, any
 decent book, possibly practical example driven.
 
 P.S. For any who knows Lisp, Practical Common Lisp was an amazing book.
 Something like that for D would be sweet.


Hi guys,

My name is Jason Gilmore, and I'm Apress' open source editor. We'd love to work
with you guys on a D book. In fact, we're the publisher of Practical Common
Lisp. :-)

Also could be a multi-author project, and we also publish several books under a
variety of open source licenses, GFDL included (Dive into Python, The
Definitive Guide to Qmail, and Pro Django among them). Regarding the
paper-versions, while we still publish those old-fashioned things (lots of
them), our e-book program is also quite strong and growing all the time.

At any rate, I hope to hear from you guys, feel free to e-mail me at
jason apress.com.

Jason
Jason Gilmore
May 25 2007
prev sibling next sibling parent Dejan Lekic <dejan.lekic gmail.com> writes:
The only D-related book I am aware of is the Japanese one. However, there is an
attempt to write a free "book" at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/D_Programming .
May 10 2007
prev sibling next sibling parent reply negerns <negerns2000 gmail.com> writes:
Denton Cockburn wrote:

 Anyone planning a 'proper' book about D?
 I'd nominate someone like Andrei, he's got the experience with this stuff.


I recently started to write a simple book on D for my colleagues and 
maybe for those interested in the D programming language here in my 
country. I am not really aware of how to do a book but I have based my 
outline on several programming books. I don't know if it'll turn out 
well or not but I wanted to try my hand on it and learn.

I can't attach it here since it's in a pdf format and it's size is more 
than the NNTP server allows.
May 11 2007
parent reply =?UTF-8?B?QW5kZXJzIEYgQmrDtnJrbHVuZA==?= <afb algonet.se> writes:
negerns wrote:


 I recently started to write a simple book on D for my colleagues and 
 maybe for those interested in the D programming language here in my 
 country. I am not really aware of how to do a book but I have based my 
 outline on several programming books. I don't know if it'll turn out 
 well or not but I wanted to try my hand on it and learn.


Is it written in English ?

If you are willing to release the text of your book under the FDL
(GNU Free Documentation License), you can post it to either Wiki ?


 I can't attach it here since it's in a pdf format and it's size is more 
 than the NNTP server allows.


You would need to submit the sources and just not the PDF, though.

--anders
May 11 2007
parent reply negerns <negerns2000 gmail.com> writes:
Anders F Björklund wrote:


 Is it written in English ?


Yes it is.


 If you are willing to release the text of your book under the FDL
 (GNU Free Documentation License), you can post it to either Wiki ?


I used OpenOffice to create it and it is still in the very early stages. 
The book is dependent on files (.d snippets converted to HTML) that I 
reference inside. Maybe I should read about FDL first :)
May 11 2007
parent =?UTF-8?B?QW5kZXJzIEYgQmrDtnJrbHVuZA==?= <afb algonet.se> writes:
negerns wrote:


 Is it written in English ?


 Yes it is.


You said "in my country", so just thought I would make sure...


 If you are willing to release the text of your book under the FDL
 (GNU Free Documentation License), you can post it to either Wiki ?


 I used OpenOffice to create it and it is still in the very early stages. 
 The book is dependent on files (.d snippets converted to HTML) that I 
 reference inside.


Sounds good, but the Wiki format might be more suitable for
community editing (if you are interested in that, of course)


 Maybe I should read about FDL first :)


http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html

--anders
May 11 2007
prev sibling next sibling parent Daniel Keep <daniel.keep.lists gmail.com> writes:
Denton Cockburn wrote:

 Anyone planning a 'proper' book about D?
 I'd nominate someone like Andrei, he's got the experience with this stuff.


As part of using D for my honours project, my supervisor asked me to
write a primer for D.  Currently, I'm writing it from the perspective of
starting with C, going over the differences between it and D, and then
moving on to the stuff that isn't in C, along with how to do common
tasks like string manipulation.

I'll definitely be releasing it once it's finished; just have to finish
it first :P  I'm thinking a CC license, at this point.

	-- Daniel

-- 
int getRandomNumber()
{
    return 4; // chosen by fair dice roll.
              // guaranteed to be random.
}

http://xkcd.com/

v2sw5+8Yhw5ln4+5pr6OFPma8u6+7Lw4Tm6+7l6+7D
i28a2Xs3MSr2e4/6+7t4TNSMb6HTOp5en5g6RAHCP  http://hackerkey.com/
May 11 2007
prev sibling parent reply janderson <askme me.com> writes:
Denton Cockburn wrote:

 Anyone planning a 'proper' book about D?
 I'd nominate someone like Andrei, he's got the experience with this stuff.



Perhaps a community effort to write a D book, preferably one that they 
would eventually try to print.  It could be made up from the best D 
articles on the web and then throughly reviewed until all the pieces 
fitted together.

-Joel

PS
I won't say its a D book since it uses D but is not about the language 
however you can get a hard copy of my thesis from my university, or a 
softcopy from here: 
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060417/anderson_01.shtml
May 11 2007
next sibling parent Trevor Parscal <trevorparscal hotmail.com> writes:
 Perhaps a community effort to write a D book, preferably one that they 
 would eventually try to print.  It could be made up from the best D 
 articles on the web and then throughly reviewed until all the pieces 
 fitted together.
 
 -Joel


I would propose that 3 different texts are essential to making a language
gerenally accessable.

1. As a first language
Most C books assume you know nothing, which makes it a good first language for
people. I believe D is a great first language (if not because it's easier than
C, than at least because it's fun) Having a book that assumes no programming
knowledge makes it much more likley that someone will start with D instead of
ending up with it (as most of us have)

2. Coming from a C-like language
Most of us have learned D as a second, third, or nth language, and it's the
simularity to C that made D easy to pick up for us. Although many of us also
knew other languages like Java or variations of C like C++ or Objective C, it's
pretty safe to say that a book that assumed knowledge of C would have been just
as easy to use. A book like this could/should also be very useful for porting
existing C code to D.

3. Reference for existing users
As you learn the language, there are a few things that you will forget from
time to time, or perhaps never quite picked up completely. A book like this
should be as simple and to the point as possible, but have enough information
to serve it's purpose. I imagine the contents of this type of book would
greatly expand if phobos or tango were included, but they both have their own
online manuals, and need for their own books.

It looks like we have some authors out there who are willing and able, but they
will need to work together under some sort of organization or leadership if
they are going to make some wiki books that are worthy of print.

-Trevor
May 11 2007
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Stephen Waits <steve waits.net> writes:
janderson wrote:

 I won't say its a D book since it uses D but is not about the language 
 however you can get a hard copy of my thesis from my university, or a 
 softcopy from here: 
 http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060417/anderson_01.shtml


Thanks for the link Joel.  I'll dig into this soon.

At first glance, I find it a bit hard to read.. sans serif, poor or no 
kerning.  Was this your University's thesis format?

Anyway, glad to see some other game related folks interested in D.

--Steve
May 11 2007
parent janderson <askme me.com> writes:
Stephen Waits wrote:

 janderson wrote:

 I won't say its a D book since it uses D but is not about the language 
 however you can get a hard copy of my thesis from my university, or a 
 softcopy from here: 
 http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060417/anderson_01.shtml


 
 Thanks for the link Joel.  I'll dig into this soon.
 
 At first glance, I find it a bit hard to read.. sans serif, poor or no 
 kerning.  Was this your University's thesis format?


To be honest, I can't remember.  I imagine it was the default format 
from word.  It's probably one of those preference things.  I still have 
an open office version if you want to reformat it yourself.


 
 Anyway, glad to see some other game related folks interested in D.
 
 --Steve
May 12 2007
prev sibling parent david <ta-nospam-zz gmx.at> writes:
janderson schrieb:
  > Perhaps a community effort to write a D book, preferably one that they

 would eventually try to print.  


concerning the printing issue see http://www.lulu.com/
(isn't the name great?)

david
May 11 2007