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digitalmars.D - Digital Mars Website

reply Jude Young <10equals2 gmail.com> writes:
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 I still think it would be great if we could unify it under the DPL 
 org. To a newcomer, the current state of things must look like
 there's a pretty fragmented community...
 
 - Alex
 


This comment, while slightly unrelated to what I am talking about,
made me think.


I was looking at digitalmars.com for a while, before that I figured
out that it was horribly out of date
and didn't accurately reflect anything in the D world.

I came very close to assuming D was dead and going off to look at
another language. (I was considering Go, But I hate the forced {} syntax)

luckily I found some info on stackoverflow that showed me d-p-l.org.

The main problems here are:
Google results are digitalmars, wikipedia, d-p-l.  It would be better
for newbies if it was immediately obvious that d-p-l is probably the
place they want.

http://www.digitalmars.com/d/2.0/index.html  That is the first link on
Google.  This page MUST either redirect directly to d-p-l, or have a
note at the top mentioning that d-p-l is the place to go.

Anything else in unintuitive and you will risk other people making the
exact same mistake that I almost did.

The D2 home is d-p-l.org, however the first thing anyone will see if
digitalmars.  digitalmars links to nice websites like dsource.
Dsource seems to be entirely dead.  I have looked, and I haven't found
an up-to-date project there.  So the first thing we are showing people
who might be interested is a out-of-date website and a seemingly dead
project site. I wonder how many people were interested in D until they
assumed that it was dead?

I CAN'T be the only one who thinks that this is entirely retarded, and
could end up being to death of this awesome language.


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Nov 11 2011
next sibling parent reply "Tobias M." <tobias.m onlinehome.de> writes:
Am 11.11.2011 23:58, schrieb Jude Young:

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 I still think it would be great if we could unify it under the DPL
 org. To a newcomer, the current state of things must look like
 there's a pretty fragmented community...

 - Alex


 This comment, while slightly unrelated to what I am talking about,
 made me think.


 I was looking at digitalmars.com for a while, before that I figured
 out that it was horribly out of date
 and didn't accurately reflect anything in the D world.

 I came very close to assuming D was dead and going off to look at
 another language. (I was considering Go, But I hate the forced {} syntax)

 luckily I found some info on stackoverflow that showed me d-p-l.org.

 The main problems here are:
 Google results are digitalmars, wikipedia, d-p-l.  It would be better
 for newbies if it was immediately obvious that d-p-l is probably the
 place they want.

 http://www.digitalmars.com/d/2.0/index.html  That is the first link on
 Google.  This page MUST either redirect directly to d-p-l, or have a
 note at the top mentioning that d-p-l is the place to go.

 Anything else in unintuitive and you will risk other people making the
 exact same mistake that I almost did.

 The D2 home is d-p-l.org, however the first thing anyone will see if
 digitalmars.  digitalmars links to nice websites like dsource.
 Dsource seems to be entirely dead.  I have looked, and I haven't found
 an up-to-date project there.  So the first thing we are showing people
 who might be interested is a out-of-date website and a seemingly dead
 project site. I wonder how many people were interested in D until they
 assumed that it was dead?

 I CAN'T be the only one who thinks that this is entirely retarded, and
 could end up being to death of this awesome language.


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 Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
 Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

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It was the same with me. I was totally unstaisfied with the digitalmars 
website becuase it seemed to be from before WW2. I totally agree to all 
of that, D is too worthy to "die" ;)
Nov 11 2011
parent maarten van damme <maartenvd1994 gmail.com> writes:
exactly what happened to me.
Saw digitalmars and dsource and thought I came a bit late and that D had
already died. Luckily I tried the newsgroups and saw they were still alive
but we do indeed need to fix this a bit.

The biggest problem here is dsource. It's slow, cluttered and dead.
and it would be great to make users clear that the main language site is
d-p-l.org and that discussions are going on on the newsgroups before they
try the forums and see nobody is responding (like I did)
Nov 11 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Jude Young" <10equals2 gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.881.1321052329.24802.digitalmars-d puremagic.com...

 http://www.digitalmars.com/d/2.0/index.html  That is the first link on
 Google.  This page MUST either redirect directly to d-p-l, or have a
 note at the top mentioning that d-p-l is the place to go.

 Anything else in unintuitive and you will risk other people making the
 exact same mistake that I almost did.


Yea, I agree. I think everyone does.


 The D2 home is d-p-l.org, however the first thing anyone will see if
 digitalmars.  digitalmars links to nice websites like dsource.
 Dsource seems to be entirely dead.  I have looked, and I haven't found
 an up-to-date project there.


DSource's project browsing definitely needs to be fixed, but there are 
definitely active projects there. I have a few there myself:

- Goldie Parsing System still uses DSource for SVN hosting, issue tracking 
and message board (although the version control will probably switch to 
Git/BitBucket by the next release):
DSource URL: http://www.dsource.org/projects/goldie

In fact, my last update to Goldie was just yesterday: 
http://www.dsource.org/projects/goldie/log/

- SemiTwist D Tools is a little bit crusty ATM, but I am still updating it, 
and fully intend to clean it up considerably. So it's not abandoned. It uses 
DSource for Wiki, SVN hosting, issue tracking and message board (but will 
also probably switch the version control to Git/BitBucket by Goldie's next 
release):
http://www.dsource.org/projects/semitwist

- HaxeD is something I'm still actively developing, and it uses DSource for 
Wiki, issue tracking and message board (version control is Hg/BitBucket):
http://www.dsource.org/projects/haxed/

Plenty of recent updates to HaxeD, too: 
https://bitbucket.org/Abscissa256/haxed/changesets

Other people have active projects on DSource, too. Off the top of my head:

Orange Serialization Library: http://dsource.org/projects/orange
Tango Library: http://dsource.org/projects/tango

Granted, VCS hosting on DSource is becoming less common with the popularity 
of GitHub and BitBucket, but DSource is still actively used for other things 
like Wiki, issue tracking and message board. It's just that, as you 
observed, it unfortunately does nothing to help people separate the wheat 
from the chaff.



 I CAN'T be the only one who thinks that this is entirely retarded, and
 could end up being to death of this awesome language.


I don't think it would be the death of it, but it definitely hampers growth.
Nov 12 2011
parent Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
I like the digital mars site!
Nov 12 2011
prev sibling parent reply Jeff Nowakowski <jeff dilacero.org> writes:
On 11/11/2011 05:58 PM, Jude Young wrote:

 I came very close to assuming D was dead and going off to look at
 another language. (I was considering Go, But I hate the forced {} syntax)


It's funny, the trivial reasons that people will come up with to choose 
a programming language.
Nov 12 2011
parent reply Jude Young <10equals2 gmail.com> writes:
On Sat 12 Nov 2011 02:19:21 PM CST, Jeff Nowakowski wrote:

 On 11/11/2011 05:58 PM, Jude Young wrote:

 I came very close to assuming D was dead and going off to look at
 another language. (I was considering Go, But I hate the forced {}
 syntax)


 It's funny, the trivial reasons that people will come up with to
 choose a programming language.


Please, I'm sure there's worse.
My real problem with it is that there doesn't seem to be any logical 
reason for it.
I just consider it annoying. And when the language doesn't seem to have 
anything else over D, I chose the one that let me have my cake and eat 
it too.

First impression of Go: if y'all are gonna be that anal about one 
little detail...
First impression of D: much cleaner syntax, C compatible, dead?(yes I 
had to throw that in there.)

Y'all should be thankful I nitpick, otherwise I'd be using Go and not 
attempting to get my friends to try D.  ; )
Nov 12 2011
parent reply Timon Gehr <timon.gehr gmx.ch> writes:
On 11/12/2011 09:41 PM, Jude Young wrote:

 On Sat 12 Nov 2011 02:19:21 PM CST, Jeff Nowakowski wrote:

 On 11/11/2011 05:58 PM, Jude Young wrote:

 I came very close to assuming D was dead and going off to look at
 another language. (I was considering Go, But I hate the forced {}
 syntax)


 It's funny, the trivial reasons that people will come up with to
 choose a programming language.


 Please, I'm sure there's worse.
 My real problem with it is that there doesn't seem to be any logical
 reason for it.


The reason is that Go does not require the ()

if i<j {
     // do stuff
}

Also

if(i<j) do_stuff();

is the same number of key strokes as

if i<j {do_stuff();}

and if you want to do other stuff, the first has to be changed to

if(i<j){do_stuff(); do_other_stuff();}

and the second to

if i<j {do_stuff(); do_other_stuff() }

Which means the second requires less changes. (unless you abuse the 
comma operator.)
Nov 12 2011
parent reply Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Saturday, November 12, 2011 22:04:46 Timon Gehr wrote:

 On 11/12/2011 09:41 PM, Jude Young wrote:

 On Sat 12 Nov 2011 02:19:21 PM CST, Jeff Nowakowski wrote:

 On 11/11/2011 05:58 PM, Jude Young wrote:

 I came very close to assuming D was dead and going off to look at
 another language. (I was considering Go, But I hate the forced {}
 syntax)


 
 It's funny, the trivial reasons that people will come up with to
 choose a programming language.


 
 Please, I'm sure there's worse.
 My real problem with it is that there doesn't seem to be any logical
 reason for it.


 
 The reason is that Go does not require the ()
 
 if i<j {
      // do stuff
 }
 
 Also
 
 if(i<j) do_stuff();
 
 is the same number of key strokes as
 
 if i<j {do_stuff();}
 
 and if you want to do other stuff, the first has to be changed to
 
 if(i<j){do_stuff(); do_other_stuff();}
 
 and the second to
 
 if i<j {do_stuff(); do_other_stuff() }
 
 Which means the second requires less changes. (unless you abuse the
 comma operator.)


Regardless of the reason (be it good or bad), there are plenty of programmers 
who really dislike it when a programming language forces you to format your 
code in a particular way. It'll definitely put off some programmers regardless 
of whatever merits the language has. Now, even if you dislike that, there 
could be plenty of other great stuff in the language that makes it worth using 
in spite of that, but all else being equal, if one language enforces a 
particular formatting and another doesn't, many programmers will go with the 
one that doesn't.

Now, there are programmers who gripe about having to use braces; there are 
programmers who gripe about having to use semicolons; there are programmers 
who gripe about just about anything and everything. So, you'll never make 
every programmer happy with whatever design choices you make. Programming 
languages should be looked at as a whole with all of their pros and cons, but 
it often doesn't take much for programmers to just give up on learning a new 
language if they don't have to learn it.

Personally, I think that I should learn Go one of these days just so that I 
have more tools in my programming toolkit and am generally more knowledgeable, 
but from what I've seen and heard of Go's general philosophies and the type of 
decisions that they've made (e.g. no function overloading and no generics) are 
the complete opposite of what I'm looking for in a programming language, so 
I'd be _very_ surprised if I actually wanted to use it for much. But it would 
still be good to learn it.

- Jonathan M Davis
Nov 12 2011
parent Timon Gehr <timon.gehr gmx.ch> writes:
On 11/12/2011 10:48 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 On Saturday, November 12, 2011 22:04:46 Timon Gehr wrote:

 On 11/12/2011 09:41 PM, Jude Young wrote:

 On Sat 12 Nov 2011 02:19:21 PM CST, Jeff Nowakowski wrote:

 On 11/11/2011 05:58 PM, Jude Young wrote:

 I came very close to assuming D was dead and going off to look at
 another language. (I was considering Go, But I hate the forced {}
 syntax)


 It's funny, the trivial reasons that people will come up with to
 choose a programming language.


 Please, I'm sure there's worse.
 My real problem with it is that there doesn't seem to be any logical
 reason for it.


 The reason is that Go does not require the ()

 if i<j {
       // do stuff
 }

 Also

 if(i<j) do_stuff();

 is the same number of key strokes as

 if i<j {do_stuff();}

 and if you want to do other stuff, the first has to be changed to

 if(i<j){do_stuff(); do_other_stuff();}

 and the second to

 if i<j {do_stuff(); do_other_stuff() }

 Which means the second requires less changes. (unless you abuse the
 comma operator.)


 Regardless of the reason (be it good or bad), there are plenty of programmers
 who really dislike it when a programming language forces you to format your
 code in a particular way. It'll definitely put off some programmers regardless
 of whatever merits the language has. Now, even if you dislike that, there
 could be plenty of other great stuff in the language that makes it worth using
 in spite of that, but all else being equal, if one language enforces a
 particular formatting and another doesn't, many programmers will go with the
 one that doesn't.


The benefit is you have more freedom, the drawback is you have to care 
about trivialities such as code formatting. I don't really care, so this 
is not something I particularly like or dislike about Go.


 Now, there are programmers who gripe about having to use braces; there are
 programmers who gripe about having to use semicolons; there are programmers
 who gripe about just about anything and everything. So, you'll never make
 every programmer happy with whatever design choices you make. Programming
 languages should be looked at as a whole with all of their pros and cons, but
 it often doesn't take much for programmers to just give up on learning a new
 language if they don't have to learn it.


That is true. It is also sad.


 Personally, I think that I should learn Go one of these days just so that I
 have more tools in my programming toolkit and am generally more knowledgeable,
 but from what I've seen and heard of Go's general philosophies and the type of
 decisions that they've made (e.g. no function overloading and no generics) are
 the complete opposite of what I'm looking for in a programming language, so
 I'd be _very_ surprised if I actually wanted to use it for much. But it would
 still be good to learn it.


I fully agree on that. I cannot imagine being anywhere near as 
productive in Go as I am in D.
Nov 12 2011