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digitalmars.D - Here's looking at you, kid

reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Hi everyone,


Recently there's been an uptick of site visits on dlang.org and also dmd 
downloads (http://erdani.com/d/downloads.daily.png).

Amid increased scrutiny it's important to focus on improving 
documentation. I suggest everyone in the community to consider improving 
dlang.org in any way. For Phobos in particular, the lack of 
documentation and examples for some really useful artifacts is damaging. 
Sometimes all it takes is adding "///" to one unittest.


Thanks,

Andrei
Nov 13 2015
next sibling parent reply Brian Schott <briancschott gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:34:18 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 Hi everyone,


 Recently there's been an uptick of site visits on dlang.org and 
 also dmd downloads (http://erdani.com/d/downloads.daily.png).

 Amid increased scrutiny it's important to focus on improving 
 documentation. I suggest everyone in the community to consider 
 improving dlang.org in any way. For Phobos in particular, the 
 lack of documentation and examples for some really useful 
 artifacts is damaging. Sometimes all it takes is adding "///" 
 to one unittest.


 Thanks,

 Andrei


I'll write some more when the fixes that I've already written get 
merged (or in the case of 1143, reviewed at all).

https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/1143
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/860
Nov 13 2015
parent reply Johan Engelen <j j.nl> writes:
 On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:34:18 UTC, Andrei 
 Alexandrescu wrote:

 Amid increased scrutiny it's important to focus on improving 
 documentation. I suggest everyone in the community to consider 
 improving dlang.org in any way.




Perhaps a slight increase in priority for pull request 
review/merging would be good :-)
So as to not demotivate contributors like Brian (and me):

On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:37:35 UTC, Brian Schott wrote:

 I'll write some more when the fixes that I've already written 
 get merged (or in the case of 1143, reviewed at all).

 https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/1143
 https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/860


While reading stuff on dlang.org, whenever I see something that 
could be improved/corrected, I try to do it immediately or add it 
to a small (mental) todo list. I like that it is easy to make 
small changes directly online. But I myself notice that having to 
wait long* on review/merge on simple PRs is demotivating.

There are not that many PRs, but some are quite old [1].
Thanks!

-Johan

* "Long" is of course very subjective, unfortunately.
[1] https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pulls
Nov 21 2015
parent bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Saturday, 21 November 2015 at 15:27:57 UTC, Johan Engelen 
wrote:


 While reading stuff on dlang.org, whenever I see something that 
 could be improved/corrected, I try to do it immediately or add 
 it to a small (mental) todo list. I like that it is easy to 
 make small changes directly online. But I myself notice that 
 having to wait long* on review/merge on simple PRs is 
 demotivating.

 There are not that many PRs, but some are quite old [1].
 Thanks!

 -Johan

 * "Long" is of course very subjective, unfortunately.
 [1] https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pulls


I recently submitted a couple of small changes and both were 
handled within a day. Maybe I got lucky, but it's a good 
indicator.
Nov 21 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent reply tsbockman <thomas.bockman gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:34:18 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 Hi everyone,


 Recently there's been an uptick of site visits on dlang.org and 
 also dmd downloads (http://erdani.com/d/downloads.daily.png).

 Amid increased scrutiny it's important to focus on improving 
 documentation. I suggest everyone in the community to consider 
 improving dlang.org in any way. For Phobos in particular, the 
 lack of documentation and examples for some really useful 
 artifacts is damaging. Sometimes all it takes is adding "///" 
 to one unittest.


 Thanks,

 Andrei


I've lost count of how many threads I've seen in the past year 
which run something like this:

A: D's C++ interop seems really weak based on this page:
     http://dlang.org/cpp_interface.html

B: That page is really out-of-date; support in the latest 
compiler version is much better than that.

A: Is there somewhere else I can find up-to-date information?

B: No.

The last substantive update to 
http://dlang.org/cpp_interface.html was in May 2014. I'm not 
qualified to update it myself, but it is clear just from skimming 
it that it is indeed very out-of-date. Among other things, this 
bit:

     "...This means that the C++ STL, and C++ Boost, likely will 
never be accessible from D."

Contradicts http://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2015H1 :

     "Smooth integration with C and C++ is an essential 
competitive advantage of D. We aim to support significant C++ 
standard library interoperability by mid-2015 and full 
interoperability on at least one platform by the end of 2015."
Nov 13 2015
next sibling parent reply Steven Schveighoffer <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On 11/13/15 6:24 PM, tsbockman wrote:

 On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:34:18 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 Hi everyone,


 Recently there's been an uptick of site visits on dlang.org and also
 dmd downloads (http://erdani.com/d/downloads.daily.png).

 Amid increased scrutiny it's important to focus on improving
 documentation. I suggest everyone in the community to consider
 improving dlang.org in any way. For Phobos in particular, the lack of
 documentation and examples for some really useful artifacts is
 damaging. Sometimes all it takes is adding "///" to one unittest.


 Thanks,

 Andrei


 I've lost count of how many threads I've seen in the past year which run
 something like this:

 A: D's C++ interop seems really weak based on this page:
      http://dlang.org/cpp_interface.html

 B: That page is really out-of-date; support in the latest compiler
 version is much better than that.

 A: Is there somewhere else I can find up-to-date information?

 B: No.


Almost all the updates to the C++ interface stuff was done to get ddmd 
working.

Since one guy was working on it and he is a compiler dev, I think he 
just did a lot of the stuff that was needed without thinking about a 
nice document on how it works.

I definitely think it's something that should be updated.

-Steve
Nov 13 2015
parent bitwise <bitwise.pvt gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 23:44:51 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer 
wrote:

++("I definitely think it's something that should be updated.");
Nov 13 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Manu via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d puremagic.com> writes:
On 14 November 2015 at 09:24, tsbockman via Digitalmars-d
<digitalmars-d puremagic.com> wrote:

 On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:34:18 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 Hi everyone,


 Recently there's been an uptick of site visits on dlang.org and also dmd
 downloads (http://erdani.com/d/downloads.daily.png).

 Amid increased scrutiny it's important to focus on improving
 documentation. I suggest everyone in the community to consider improving
 dlang.org in any way. For Phobos in particular, the lack of documentation
 and examples for some really useful artifacts is damaging. Sometimes all it
 takes is adding "///" to one unittest.


 Thanks,

 Andrei



 I've lost count of how many threads I've seen in the past year which run
 something like this:

 A: D's C++ interop seems really weak based on this page:
     http://dlang.org/cpp_interface.html

 B: That page is really out-of-date; support in the latest compiler version
 is much better than that.

 A: Is there somewhere else I can find up-to-date information?

 B: No.

 The last substantive update to http://dlang.org/cpp_interface.html was in
 May 2014. I'm not qualified to update it myself, but it is clear just from
 skimming it that it is indeed very out-of-date. Among other things, this
 bit:

     "...This means that the C++ STL, and C++ Boost, likely will never be
 accessible from D."

 Contradicts http://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2015H1 :

     "Smooth integration with C and C++ is an essential competitive advantage
 of D. We aim to support significant C++ standard library interoperability by
 mid-2015 and full interoperability on at least one platform by the end of
 2015."


Count me among them. I've been trying to do a lot of C++ interop
recently; referred to that page which didn't help, and then continued
mainly by trial and error.
I would really like to know the current state for my work, I just try
stuff and hope it works... (it usually doesn't, and I get a lot of
wild errors and ICE's)
I'd love to read a revised edition of that page! :)
Nov 13 2015
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 11/13/2015 4:47 PM, Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 Count me among them. I've been trying to do a lot of C++ interop
 recently; referred to that page which didn't help, and then continued
 mainly by trial and error.
 I would really like to know the current state for my work, I just try
 stuff and hope it works... (it usually doesn't, and I get a lot of
 wild errors and ICE's)
 I'd love to read a revised edition of that page! :)


The current state can be found here:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkwaV6k6BmM

slides:

   http://www.walterbright.com/cppint.pdf

If someone would care to turn that into a pull request for

   http://dlang.org/cpp_interface.html

that would be most appreciated!
Nov 13 2015
next sibling parent reply Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d puremagic.com> writes:
On Fri, 2015-11-13 at 19:40 -0800, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d
wrote:

 [=E2=80=A6]
=20
 that would be most appreciated!


Or you could do it based on your material, no?

--=20
Russel.
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder ekiga.n=
et
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
Nov 14 2015
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 11/14/2015 08:47 AM, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 On Fri, 2015-11-13 at 19:40 -0800, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d
 wrote:

 […]

 that would be most appreciated!


 Or you could do it based on your material, no?


I take it there's a bit of sarcasm there, so probably it's worth trying 
a longer answer.

There's been a recurring matter in our community with delegating work. 
Some work can be done by several of our talented contributors, whereas 
some other work can only be tackled by a few core contributors.

Naturally, it stands to reason that Walter should be able to delegate 
non-Walter work and focus on Walter work. Same goes for me - I cannot 
delegate work such as the Foundation, conference travels, DConf 
sponsorship/strategy/PR, or writing articles; but I should be able to 
delegate things such as at least some of the work on reference counting, 
collections, fixing bugs found in the process, updating dconf.org, etc.

We've had moderate success at delegating work but it's been highly 
unpredictable whether any specific request could go through. This can 
get quite frustrating; for example, it is well acknowledged by the 
community that Phobos should not create garbage gratuitously. Seeing 
that nobody is actually doing it, Walter did a bunch of work on that, 
but his initiative has not been followed. Recently I also pitched in 
with "Under 1000 opened bugs for Phobos" and suggested that a simple 
pass through by us all could thin the list considerably to the much 
fewer bugs that are truly difficult. The response was non-null (thank 
you) but much smaller than it could have been.

This has been going on for a good while, and again my perception is 
there has been some progress. But by and large Walter has been hard at 
work on a mix of only-Walter and non-Walter problems, with the known 
negative effects on focus and effectiveness. So we agreed that Walter 
will focus on C++ exceptions and I'll save him of Foundation, 
refcounting, and DConf work.

In light of him being focused on getting C++ exceptions going, I think 
it's entirely appropriate that he suggests others to write the 
documentation.


Thanks,

Andrei
Nov 14 2015
parent reply Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d puremagic.com> writes:
On Sat, 2015-11-14 at 11:35 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-
d wrote:

 [=E2=80=A6]
=20
 I take it there's a bit of sarcasm there, so probably it's worth
 trying=20
 a longer answer.


Hummm=E2=80=A6 sort of. It was also a bit of a reaction at the "fling off
effort to others". Basically Walter could have worded things a wee bit
better than he did.


 [=E2=80=A6]
 it's entirely appropriate that he suggests others to write the=20
 documentation.


For various reasons I shall be doing little or no leaving my flat for
the first six months at least of 2016. I think I am more or less
committed to rewriting Me TV (C++, but might consider D), and making
SCons work on Python 3 (definitely Python), but if there is a directed
programme of technical authoring for D I could consider that instead of
writing a book for Manning. Unless, of course, someone gets me some
paid part-time teleworking.

--=20
Russel.
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder ekiga.n=
et
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
Nov 15 2015
parent reply Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= writes:
On Sunday, 15 November 2015 at 19:02:08 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:

 flat for the first six months at least of 2016. I think I am 
 more or less committed to rewriting Me TV (C++, but might 
 consider D),


What is "Me TV"?
Nov 18 2015
next sibling parent reply Daniel =?UTF-8?B?S296w6Fr?= via Digitalmars-d writes:
V Wed, 18 Nov 2015 17:21:50 +0000
Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d puremagic.com>
napsáno:


 On Sunday, 15 November 2015 at 19:02:08 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:

 flat for the first six months at least of 2016. I think I am 
 more or less committed to rewriting Me TV (C++, but might 
 consider D),  


 
 What is "Me TV"?


I hope it is this: https://launchpad.net/me-tv

It has been my favorite app for watching DVB TV on linux
Nov 18 2015
parent reply Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= writes:
On Wednesday, 18 November 2015 at 18:22:55 UTC, Daniel Kozák 
wrote:

 I hope it is this: https://launchpad.net/me-tv

 It has been my favorite app for watching DVB TV on linux


That's pretty cool, seems to cover most of Europe?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVB-T
Nov 18 2015
parent Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d puremagic.com> writes:
On Wed, 2015-11-18 at 18:32 +0000, Ola Fosheim Gr=C3=B8stad via Digitalmars=
-
d wrote:

 On Wednesday, 18 November 2015 at 18:22:55 UTC, Daniel Koz=C3=A1k=20
 wrote:

 I hope it is this: https://launchpad.net/me-tv
=20
 It has been my favorite app for watching DVB TV on linux


=20
 That's pretty cool, seems to cover most of Europe?
=20
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVB-T


It also has capability for the USA and RoW as well as DVB-T. I can only
test DVB-T though.

Clearly there is MythTV but that is a full on server system, no point
in competing with that. VLC is often cited but it really cannot be seen
as a DVB-T client, just as a channel player for those who understand
transponders and channels (hence using VLC as a backend for Me TV.

--=20
Russel.
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder ekiga.n=
et
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
Nov 18 2015
prev sibling parent Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d puremagic.com> writes:
On Wed, 2015-11-18 at 19:22 +0100, Daniel Koz=C3=A1k via Digitalmars-d
wrote:

 V Wed, 18 Nov 2015 17:21:50 +0000
 Ola Fosheim Gr=C3=B8stad via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d puremagic.com>
 naps=C3=A1no:
=20

 On Sunday, 15 November 2015 at 19:02:08 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:

 flat for the first six months at least of 2016. I think I am=20
 more or less committed to rewriting Me TV (C++, but might=20
 consider D),=C2=A0=C2=A0


=20
 What is "Me TV"?


 I hope it is this: https://launchpad.net/me-tv
=20
 It has been my favorite app for watching DVB TV on linux


Sort of.

Me TV 1.x (x < 4) was a DVB-T (and other systems including the USA
variant, but I only have DVB-T) viewer with record capability. Me TV
2.x was to be a server-based media system, but enthusiasm of the sole
developer disappeared. Me TV 1.4 was a quick hack by various people,
but there is no activity on it.

I have forked 1.3.x (with agreement of the people who were keeping 1.4
alive) with a view to creating just a client. Keep it lightweight, all
the server stuff can be handled by other systems. This will eventually
be Me TV 3.x if I can get time to actually work on it. The workplan is:

	DVB-T v3 =E2=86=92 DVB-T v5
	Gtk+v2 =E2=86=92 Gtk+v3
	Xine =E2=86=92 Gstreamer and VLC and Xine

I have feature branches beginning each of them, but it has been a bit
stalled for the last 6 months. For DVB-T v5 I am wondering whether to
rip out the current code and just depend on LinuxTV, but maybe not if
this is to work on OSX, UNIX and Windows (but there are already other
(better) players on those platforms). Switching to Gtk+v3 is turning
out tricker than first thought, code, unique, glade,=E2=80=A6. Fedora has n=
o
Xine and getting Gstreamer to do the right thing is proving tricker
than first anticipated; VLC not really working either.

Some of this code is still clearly C. I have tried to make all the C++
to be sensible C++14, however some is clearly not sensible, especially
the SQL stuff. And then there is the question of how much to start
shifting this from C++ to D (or Go or Rust, but I shouldn't mention
that here :-).

If there was interest in people helping out on this, even just a little
bit, it would be really helpful. Some of the old Me TV folk did some
work on this a few months ago, especially adding browser UI things.

I switched from Bazaar to Git so as to use GitHub, not because I think
Git is better than Bazaar (I much prefer Bazaar), but GitHub is
probably a better place to do collaboration these days. Launchpad is a
fine system and getting some serious work done on it, but Canonical see
it as a DevOps platform for rolling out Ubuntu, not as a project
development/collaboration system. So the Launchpad Me TV location
remains the headquarters (because the people still there asked for
that), but I have set up:

https://github.com/Me-TV/Me-TV

as the "my fork" mainline, with my fork of that being:

https://github.com/russel/Me-TV

If this could be made a minor "poster child" for C++ =E2=86=92 D conversion=
, I
would be very happy. But this really requires more than just me working
on it. Currently I am intending to persevere with C++14 even though I
would like to use D.

Currently the build is ancient Autotools for Anjuta users, and SCons
because I work on the SCons project (D tooling mostly, but also Python
3). Sadly though CLion only allows for CMake so I think I will have to
make a CMake build. Crucially though no Dub.

The issue on the last point is that Me TV 1.3.7 is packaged for Debian
but may be dropped :-( Fedora has already dropped Me TV. The build
system used must be acceptable to Debian and Fedora so that Me TV 3.x
can be packaged by them. They will not use Dub. They tend to insist on
Autotools, but will allow SCons or CMake.

--=20
Russel.
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder ekiga.n=
et
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
Nov 18 2015
prev sibling parent reply Jack Stouffer <jack jackstouffer.com> writes:
On Saturday, 14 November 2015 at 03:40:08 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:

 The current state can be found here:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkwaV6k6BmM

 slides:

   http://www.walterbright.com/cppint.pdf

 If someone would care to turn that into a pull request for

   http://dlang.org/cpp_interface.html

 that would be most appreciated!


Walter, why didn't you make an announce thread for this talk? It 
would have been very popular on reddit as well.
Nov 14 2015
parent Meta <jared771 gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 15 November 2015 at 07:45:18 UTC, Jack Stouffer wrote:

 Walter, why didn't you make an announce thread for this talk? 
 It would have been very popular on reddit as well.


I'm pretty sure it was. I remember watching it months ago.
Nov 15 2015
prev sibling parent reply Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d puremagic.com> writes:
On Sat, 2015-11-14 at 10:47 +1000, Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 [=E2=80=A6]
 I'd love to read a revised edition of that page! :)


So write it, and do the pull request. It doesn't matter if it is any
good or not, what matters is activity. All the waffling and wailing on

changes things. Someone putting something forward will generate
activity leading to something better.

--=20
Russel.
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder ekiga.n=
et
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
Nov 14 2015
next sibling parent reply Loretta <loretta lifeofbrian.com> writes:
On Saturday, 14 November 2015 at 13:46:32 UTC, Russel Winder 
wrote:

 On Sat, 2015-11-14 at 10:47 +1000, Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 […]
 I'd love to read a revised edition of that page! :)


 So write it, and do the pull request. It doesn't matter if it 
 is any good or not, what matters is activity. All the waffling 

 constructive activity changes things. Someone putting something 
 forward will generate activity leading to something better.


I agree. It's action that counts, not words, and we need action 
now.
Nov 14 2015
parent reply Reg <reg lifeofbrian.com> writes:
On Saturday, 14 November 2015 at 17:01:53 UTC, Loretta wrote:

 On Saturday, 14 November 2015 at 13:46:32 UTC, Russel Winder 
 wrote:

 On Sat, 2015-11-14 at 10:47 +1000, Manu via Digitalmars-d 
 wrote:

 […]
 I'd love to read a revised edition of that page! :)


 So write it, and do the pull request. It doesn't matter if it 
 is any good or not, what matters is activity. All the waffling 

 constructive activity changes things. Someone putting 
 something forward will generate activity leading to something 
 better.


 I agree. It's action that counts, not words, and we need action 
 now.


We could sit around here all day talking, passing resolutions, 
making clever speeches. It's not going to shift one Roman soldier!
Nov 14 2015
parent Andy Smith <andyrsmith googlemail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 14 November 2015 at 17:03:21 UTC, Reg wrote:

 On Saturday, 14 November 2015 at 17:01:53 UTC, Loretta wrote:

 On Saturday, 14 November 2015 at 13:46:32 UTC, Russel Winder 
 wrote:

 On Sat, 2015-11-14 at 10:47 +1000, Manu via Digitalmars-d 
 wrote:

 [...]


 So write it, and do the pull request. It doesn't matter if it 
 is any good or not, what matters is activity. All the 

 only constructive activity changes things. Someone putting 
 something forward will generate activity leading to something 
 better.


 I agree. It's action that counts, not words, and we need 
 action now.


 We could sit around here all day talking, passing resolutions, 
 making clever speeches. It's not going to shift one Roman 
 soldier!


Sorry - I couldn't resist :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YawagQ6lLrA
Nov 14 2015
prev sibling parent reply Jakob Ovrum <jakobovrum gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 14 November 2015 at 13:46:32 UTC, Russel Winder 
wrote:

 On Sat, 2015-11-14 at 10:47 +1000, Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 […]
 I'd love to read a revised edition of that page! :)


 So write it, and do the pull request. It doesn't matter if it 
 is any good or not, what matters is activity. All the waffling 

 constructive activity changes things. Someone putting something 
 forward will generate activity leading to something better.


The reason people are posting instead of editing is because 
nobody friggin knows how the new stuff works except Daniel 
Murphy. At least that's what I thought until Walter posted the 
dconf talk which ostensibly explains it; I haven't watched it 
yet, but if I do and it covers the new stuff, then I will 
definitely update the specification.
Nov 14 2015
parent Jakob Ovrum <jakobovrum gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 15 November 2015 at 06:25:31 UTC, Jakob Ovrum wrote:

 The reason people are posting instead of editing is because 
 nobody friggin knows how the new stuff works except Daniel 
 Murphy. At least that's what I thought until Walter posted the 
 dconf talk which ostensibly explains it; I haven't watched it 
 yet, but if I do and it covers the new stuff, then I will 
 definitely update the specification.


Well, here it is:

https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/1154
Nov 19 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent reply bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:34:18 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 Hi everyone,


 Recently there's been an uptick of site visits on dlang.org and 
 also dmd downloads (http://erdani.com/d/downloads.daily.png).

 Amid increased scrutiny it's important to focus on improving 
 documentation. I suggest everyone in the community to consider 
 improving dlang.org in any way. For Phobos in particular, the 
 lack of documentation and examples for some really useful 
 artifacts is damaging. Sometimes all it takes is adding "///" 
 to one unittest.


 Thanks,

 Andrei


I've proposed this before but it didn't get much attention, so 
let me bring it up again.

In a lot of cases there are already good explanations in Ali's 
book or on the wiki, but new users won't know about them. We 
could greatly improve the quality of the documentation at almost 
no cost by adding links to those documents. It wouldn't be a good 
idea to link to arbitrary sites, but I don't see any reason to 
not link to those two sources, as opposed to waiting for someone 
to reinvent the wheel.
Nov 13 2015
parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 11/13/2015 4:37 PM, bachmeier wrote:

 I've proposed this before but it didn't get much attention, so let me bring it
 up again.

 In a lot of cases there are already good explanations in Ali's book or on the
 wiki, but new users won't know about them. We could greatly improve the quality
 of the documentation at almost no cost by adding links to those documents. It
 wouldn't be a good idea to link to arbitrary sites, but I don't see any reason
 to not link to those two sources, as opposed to waiting for someone to reinvent
 the wheel.


That's a good idea, and you don't need to wait for anyone else to give it 
attention. Anyone can submit pull requests for the documentation! Please do!
Nov 13 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Saurabh Das <saurabh.das gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:34:18 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 Hi everyone,


 Recently there's been an uptick of site visits on dlang.org and 
 also dmd downloads (http://erdani.com/d/downloads.daily.png).

 Amid increased scrutiny it's important to focus on improving 
 documentation. I suggest everyone in the community to consider 
 improving dlang.org in any way. For Phobos in particular, the 
 lack of documentation and examples for some really useful 
 artifacts is damaging. Sometimes all it takes is adding "///" 
 to one unittest.


 Thanks,

 Andrei


This is slightly off-topic, but: I've been encouraging my friends 
and colleagues to use Dlang over the last year and the one pain 
point they constantly tell me about is that the documentation 
website is "difficult to use" and "looks intimidating".

I believe that this is due to the colour scheme - it isn't 
friendly or vibrant. For example, look at these documentation 
websites:

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/
https://docs.python.org/2/library/functions.html
https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.8.1.0/docs/Control-Monad.html
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xfhwa508(v=vs.110).aspx

In particular, contrast the Dlang "Getting Started" page with 
some others:

http://dlang.org/getstarted.html
https://www.python.org/about/gettingstarted/
https://www.djangoproject.com/start/
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html
https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/referencelibrary/GettingStarted/DevelopiOSAppsSwift/

The others do feel much more "complete" and "friendlier" that 
dlang.org. I feel that the completeness part will be addressed by 
the community but the intangible "friendlier" aspect is something 
we are missing.

Unfortunately I'm not an expert in these matters either - just 
bringing out what I've heard from multiple people about dlang.org.

Thanks,
Saurabh

PS: Point taken Andrei, I will find some time to contribute back 
to the Dlang community, even if it's only documentation.
Nov 15 2015
next sibling parent reply Rikki Cattermole <alphaglosined gmail.com> writes:
On 16/11/15 12:46 AM, Saurabh Das wrote:

 On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:34:18 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 Hi everyone,


 Recently there's been an uptick of site visits on dlang.org and also
 dmd downloads (http://erdani.com/d/downloads.daily.png).

 Amid increased scrutiny it's important to focus on improving
 documentation. I suggest everyone in the community to consider
 improving dlang.org in any way. For Phobos in particular, the lack of
 documentation and examples for some really useful artifacts is
 damaging. Sometimes all it takes is adding "///" to one unittest.


 Thanks,

 Andrei


 This is slightly off-topic, but: I've been encouraging my friends and
 colleagues to use Dlang over the last year and the one pain point they
 constantly tell me about is that the documentation website is "difficult
 to use" and "looks intimidating".

 I believe that this is due to the colour scheme - it isn't friendly or
 vibrant. For example, look at these documentation websites:

 https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/
 https://docs.python.org/2/library/functions.html
 https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.8.1.0/docs/Control-Monad.html
 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xfhwa508(v=vs.110).aspx

 In particular, contrast the Dlang "Getting Started" page with some others:

 http://dlang.org/getstarted.html
 https://www.python.org/about/gettingstarted/
 https://www.djangoproject.com/start/
 http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html
 https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/referencelibrary/GettingStarted/DevelopiOSAppsSwift/


 The others do feel much more "complete" and "friendlier" that dlang.org.
 I feel that the completeness part will be addressed by the community but
 the intangible "friendlier" aspect is something we are missing.

 Unfortunately I'm not an expert in these matters either - just bringing
 out what I've heard from multiple people about dlang.org.

 Thanks,
 Saurabh

 PS: Point taken Andrei, I will find some time to contribute back to the
 Dlang community, even if it's only documentation.


Since you have a target audience to test out, would you mind overhauling 
the getting started page?
It is a rather worth well addition/modification :)
Nov 15 2015
parent Saurabh Das <saurabh.das gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 15 November 2015 at 11:50:57 UTC, Rikki Cattermole 
wrote:

 Since you have a target audience to test out, would you mind 
 overhauling the getting started page?
 It is a rather worth well addition/modification :)


Yes - Andrei's post has already prompted me to put that on my 
ToDo list :)
Nov 15 2015
prev sibling parent reply Warwick <warwick warwick.com> writes:
On Sunday, 15 November 2015 at 11:46:54 UTC, Saurabh Das wrote:

 On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:34:18 UTC, Andrei 
 Alexandrescu wrote:

 Hi everyone,


 Recently there's been an uptick of site visits on dlang.org 
 and also dmd downloads 
 (http://erdani.com/d/downloads.daily.png).

 Amid increased scrutiny it's important to focus on improving 
 documentation. I suggest everyone in the community to consider 
 improving dlang.org in any way. For Phobos in particular, the 
 lack of documentation and examples for some really useful 
 artifacts is damaging. Sometimes all it takes is adding "///" 
 to one unittest.


 Thanks,

 Andrei


 This is slightly off-topic, but: I've been encouraging my 
 friends and colleagues to use Dlang over the last year and the 
 one pain point they constantly tell me about is that the 
 documentation website is "difficult to use" and "looks 
 intimidating".


The problem is you click on "Language Reference" and what you 
actually get is a "Language Specification".

For example you click on "Modules" and you get this...

=====================================================
Module:
     ModuleDeclaration DeclDefs
     DeclDefs

DeclDefs:
     DeclDef
     DeclDef DeclDefs

DeclDef:
     AttributeSpecifier
     Declaration
     Constructor
     Destructor
     Postblit
     Allocator
     Deallocator
     Invariant
     UnitTest
     AliasThis
     StaticConstructor
     StaticDestructor
     SharedStaticConstructor
     SharedStaticDestructor
     ConditionalDeclaration
     DebugSpecification
     VersionSpecification
     StaticAssert
     TemplateDeclaration
     TemplateMixinDeclaration
     TemplateMixin
     MixinDeclaration
     ;
===========================================================

Who is that a reference for? I mean what user needs that 
information in that format? Sure if your actually writing a D 
compiler yourself that is probably useful... but if your a user?
Nov 15 2015
next sibling parent reply Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Sunday, 15 November 2015 at 13:50:36 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 The problem is you click on "Language Reference" and what you 
 actually get is a "Language Specification".

 For example you click on "Modules" and you get this...

 =====================================================
 Module:
     ModuleDeclaration DeclDefs
     DeclDefs

 DeclDefs:
     DeclDef
     DeclDef DeclDefs

 DeclDef:
     AttributeSpecifier
     Declaration
     Constructor
     Destructor
     Postblit
     Allocator
     Deallocator
     Invariant
     UnitTest
     AliasThis
     StaticConstructor
     StaticDestructor
     SharedStaticConstructor
     SharedStaticDestructor
     ConditionalDeclaration
     DebugSpecification
     VersionSpecification
     StaticAssert
     TemplateDeclaration
     TemplateMixinDeclaration
     TemplateMixin
     MixinDeclaration
     ;
 ===========================================================

 Who is that a reference for? I mean what user needs that 
 information in that format? Sure if your actually writing a D 
 compiler yourself that is probably useful... but if your a user?


Honestly, I do think that that's useful as a user, but I'm also 
familiar with how a compiler works and tend to look at a language 
form a very technical perspective, whereas many others tend to 
try and figure out the bare minimum to get stuff done and don't 
care much about the details.

- Jonathan M Davis
Nov 15 2015
parent Warwick <warwick warwick.com> writes:
On Sunday, 15 November 2015 at 14:27:50 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
wrote:

 On Sunday, 15 November 2015 at 13:50:36 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 Who is that a reference for? I mean what user needs that 
 information in that format? Sure if your actually writing a D 
 compiler yourself that is probably useful... but if your a 
 user?


 Honestly, I do think that that's useful as a user, but I'm also 
 familiar with how a compiler works and tend to look at a 
 language form a very technical perspective, whereas many others 
 tend to try and figure out the bare minimum to get stuff done 
 and don't care much about the details.


Funilly enough that's exactly how it comes over... as a reference 
written for experienced D users or compiler guys.

The average user / programmer coming from another language? 
Where's the reference for them?
Nov 15 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent Chris Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 15 November 2015 at 13:50:36 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 On Sunday, 15 November 2015 at 11:46:54 UTC, Saurabh Das wrote:

 On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:34:18 UTC, Andrei 
 Alexandrescu wrote:

 Hi everyone,


 Recently there's been an uptick of site visits on dlang.org 
 and also dmd downloads 
 (http://erdani.com/d/downloads.daily.png).

 Amid increased scrutiny it's important to focus on improving 
 documentation. I suggest everyone in the community to 
 consider improving dlang.org in any way. For Phobos in 
 particular, the lack of documentation and examples for some 
 really useful artifacts is damaging. Sometimes all it takes 
 is adding "///" to one unittest.


 Thanks,

 Andrei


 This is slightly off-topic, but: I've been encouraging my 
 friends and colleagues to use Dlang over the last year and the 
 one pain point they constantly tell me about is that the 
 documentation website is "difficult to use" and "looks 
 intimidating".


 The problem is you click on "Language Reference" and what you 
 actually get is a "Language Specification".


This.

To make it worse, it's not just that you can easily get to the 
spec when you want a tutorial; there's no halfway decent tutorial 
aimed at online audiences, as far as I can tell.

Ali's book is good for people with the patience to go through a 
book, but it's a bit heavy for browsing while online, and it's a 
little buried. It's almost as easy to get to the Overview page, 
which is basically an advertisement aimed at a technical manager 
in a C++ shop circa 1992 and says more about C++ than D.
Nov 15 2015
prev sibling parent reply Jeremy DeHaan <dehaan.jeremiah gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 15 November 2015 at 13:50:36 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 On Sunday, 15 November 2015 at 11:46:54 UTC, Saurabh Das wrote:

 On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:34:18 UTC, Andrei 
 Alexandrescu wrote:

 [...]


 This is slightly off-topic, but: I've been encouraging my 
 friends and colleagues to use Dlang over the last year and the 
 one pain point they constantly tell me about is that the 
 documentation website is "difficult to use" and "looks 
 intimidating".


 The problem is you click on "Language Reference" and what you 
 actually get is a "Language Specification".



Which is funny, because I think the specification page is 
actually a decent reference.

http://dlang.org/spec.html
Nov 18 2015
parent reply Saurabh Das <saurabh.das gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 19 November 2015 at 02:22:14 UTC, Jeremy DeHaan 
wrote:

 On Sunday, 15 November 2015 at 13:50:36 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 On Sunday, 15 November 2015 at 11:46:54 UTC, Saurabh Das wrote:

 On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:34:18 UTC, Andrei 
 Alexandrescu wrote:

 [...]


 This is slightly off-topic, but: I've been encouraging my 
 friends and colleagues to use Dlang over the last year and 
 the one pain point they constantly tell me about is that the 
 documentation website is "difficult to use" and "looks 
 intimidating".


 The problem is you click on "Language Reference" and what you 
 actually get is a "Language Specification".



 Which is funny, because I think the specification page is 
 actually a decent reference.

 http://dlang.org/spec.html


It is a decent reference for you because you understand it. For 
programmers who aren't as experienced / knowledgeable as you, 
it's looks like gibberish.

We have to put ourselves in the shoes of those who are just 
getting into the language / less experienced and thus reduce the 
level of difficulty in the documentation. ie: Make it more 
verbose, less technical, friendlier.
Nov 18 2015
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 11/18/2015 11:02 PM, Saurabh Das wrote:

 On Thursday, 19 November 2015 at 02:22:14 UTC, Jeremy DeHaan wrote:

 On Sunday, 15 November 2015 at 13:50:36 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 On Sunday, 15 November 2015 at 11:46:54 UTC, Saurabh Das wrote:

 On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:34:18 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 [...]


 This is slightly off-topic, but: I've been encouraging my friends
 and colleagues to use Dlang over the last year and the one pain
 point they constantly tell me about is that the documentation
 website is "difficult to use" and "looks intimidating".


 The problem is you click on "Language Reference" and what you
 actually get is a "Language Specification".



 Which is funny, because I think the specification page is actually a
 decent reference.

 http://dlang.org/spec.html


 It is a decent reference for you because you understand it. For
 programmers who aren't as experienced / knowledgeable as you, it's looks
 like gibberish.

 We have to put ourselves in the shoes of those who are just getting into
 the language / less experienced and thus reduce the level of difficulty
 in the documentation. ie: Make it more verbose, less technical, friendlier.


Generally a language reference is not good for learning a language. -- 
Andrei
Nov 19 2015
parent reply Warwick <warwick warwick.com> writes:
On Thursday, 19 November 2015 at 12:28:44 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 11/18/2015 11:02 PM, Saurabh Das wrote:

 On Thursday, 19 November 2015 at 02:22:14 UTC, Jeremy DeHaan

 It is a decent reference for you because you understand it. For
 programmers who aren't as experienced / knowledgeable as you, 
 it's looks
 like gibberish.

 We have to put ourselves in the shoes of those who are just 
 getting into
 the language / less experienced and thus reduce the level of 
 difficulty
 in the documentation. ie: Make it more verbose, less 
 technical, friendlier.


 Generally a language reference is not good for learning a 
 language. -- Andrei


IE. There's nothing on the D website that is "good for learning" 
D.

There's an offsite tutorial aimed at "absolute begginers".

****ing great set of options aint it.
Nov 19 2015
parent reply rsw0x <anonymous anonymous.com> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 00:47:17 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 On Thursday, 19 November 2015 at 12:28:44 UTC, Andrei 
 Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 11/18/2015 11:02 PM, Saurabh Das wrote:

 [...]


 Generally a language reference is not good for learning a 
 language. -- Andrei


 IE. There's nothing on the D website that is "good for 
 learning" D.

 There's an offsite tutorial aimed at "absolute begginers".

 ****ing great set of options aint it.


Ali's book is not a tutorial or aimed at absolute beginners, it's 
/the/ material for learning D and in my opinion a great reference 
book.
Nov 19 2015
next sibling parent reply Jack Stouffer <jack jackstouffer.com> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 01:28:00 UTC, rsw0x wrote:

 Ali's book is not a tutorial or aimed at absolute beginners, 
 it's /the/ material for learning D and in my opinion a great 
 reference book.


Ali's book is to blame really for the lack of D tutorials, it's 
just so good that no one else bothers ;)
Nov 19 2015
parent reply jmh530 <john.michael.hall gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 01:56:41 UTC, Jack Stouffer wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 01:28:00 UTC, rsw0x wrote:

 Ali's book is not a tutorial or aimed at absolute beginners, 
 it's /the/ material for learning D and in my opinion a great 
 reference book.


 Ali's book is to blame really for the lack of D tutorials, it's 
 just so good that no one else bothers ;)


Wouldn't that suggest doing a better job pointing beginners to it?
Nov 19 2015
parent reply Jack Stouffer <jack jackstouffer.com> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 05:00:16 UTC, jmh530 wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 01:56:41 UTC, Jack Stouffer 
 wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 01:28:00 UTC, rsw0x wrote:

 Ali's book is not a tutorial or aimed at absolute beginners, 
 it's /the/ material for learning D and in my opinion a great 
 reference book.


 Ali's book is to blame really for the lack of D tutorials, 
 it's just so good that no one else bothers ;)


 Wouldn't that suggest doing a better job pointing beginners to 
 it?


The second link on the "Getting Started" page on dlang.org is to 
the book http://dlang.org/getstarted.html.
Nov 19 2015
parent Joakim <dlang joakim.fea.st> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 05:59:14 UTC, Jack Stouffer wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 05:00:16 UTC, jmh530 wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 01:56:41 UTC, Jack Stouffer 
 wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 01:28:00 UTC, rsw0x wrote:

 Ali's book is not a tutorial or aimed at absolute beginners, 
 it's /the/ material for learning D and in my opinion a great 
 reference book.


 Ali's book is to blame really for the lack of D tutorials, 
 it's just so good that no one else bothers ;)


 Wouldn't that suggest doing a better job pointing beginners to 
 it?


 The second link on the "Getting Started" page on dlang.org is 
 to the book http://dlang.org/getstarted.html.


That page says that Ali's book is an "extensive tutorial" that's 
"a great starting point for absolute beginners."  Presumably 
that's what pissed Warwick off, I guess he wants something more 
aimed at intermediate to advanced programmers.  That would be 
TDPL, which is excellent and not free.  Perhaps TDPL should be 
mentioned on that page too, along with how it's different.
Nov 20 2015
prev sibling parent reply Warwick <warwick warwick.com> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 01:28:00 UTC, rsw0x wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 00:47:17 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 On Thursday, 19 November 2015 at 12:28:44 UTC, Andrei 
 Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 11/18/2015 11:02 PM, Saurabh Das wrote:

 [...]


 Generally a language reference is not good for learning a 
 language. -- Andrei


 IE. There's nothing on the D website that is "good for 
 learning" D.

 There's an offsite tutorial aimed at "absolute begginers".

 ****ing great set of options aint it.


 Ali's book is not a tutorial or aimed at absolute beginners, 
 it's /the/ material for learning D and in my opinion a great 
 reference book.


It says on the website and I quote... "a great starting point for 
absolute beginners"

But the fundamental problem and what everyone seems to be 
refusing to acknowledge is that in spite of what *you think 
people should be doing* many visitors are ending up using 
language reference to learn D.

Or they use that reference to get their first impressions.

It's like going to a restaurant and being given the recipes 
instead of the menu.

But keep burying you heads in the ground.
Nov 20 2015
next sibling parent rsw0x <anonymous anonymous.com> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 08:51:13 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 01:28:00 UTC, rsw0x wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 00:47:17 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 [...]


 Ali's book is not a tutorial or aimed at absolute beginners, 
 it's /the/ material for learning D and in my opinion a great 
 reference book.


 It says on the website and I quote... "a great starting point 
 for absolute beginners"

 But the fundamental problem and what everyone seems to be 
 refusing to acknowledge is that in spite of what *you think 
 people should be doing* many visitors are ending up using 
 language reference to learn D.

 Or they use that reference to get their first impressions.

 It's like going to a restaurant and being given the recipes 
 instead of the menu.

 But keep burying you heads in the ground.


I seriously don't see what the problem is.
The best resource for learning D is the second link on the 
"getting started" page. The language reference is under the 'for 
more depth' category.
Nov 20 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Mengu <mengukagan gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 08:51:13 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 01:28:00 UTC, rsw0x wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 00:47:17 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 [...]


 Ali's book is not a tutorial or aimed at absolute beginners, 
 it's /the/ material for learning D and in my opinion a great 
 reference book.


 It says on the website and I quote... "a great starting point 
 for absolute beginners"

 But the fundamental problem and what everyone seems to be 
 refusing to acknowledge is that in spite of what *you think 
 people should be doing* many visitors are ending up using 
 language reference to learn D.

 Or they use that reference to get their first impressions.

 It's like going to a restaurant and being given the recipes 
 instead of the menu.

 But keep burying you heads in the ground.


i agree with warwick. language reference as of now is language 
spec and people will take a look at it before reading any books.
Nov 20 2015
parent reply crimaniak <crimaniak gmail.com> writes:
Library reference is not very good too. In my previous try with D 
I even made a browser extension to show classes, functions, 
variables, etc. in 'jump to' section with different backgrounds. 
The reference should definitely be more fine grained and is 
equipped with user comments, which are extremely useful. See PHP 
document pages for example 
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.session-set-cookie-params.php
Nov 20 2015
parent reply David DeWitt <dkdewitt gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 12:52:15 UTC, crimaniak wrote:

 Library reference is not very good too. In my previous try with 
 D I even made a browser extension to show classes, functions, 
 variables, etc. in 'jump to' section with different 
 backgrounds. The reference should definitely be more fine 
 grained and is equipped with user comments, which are extremely 
 useful. See PHP document pages for example 
 http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.session-set-cookie-params.php


The "New Library Reference Preview" under Resources is much 
cleaner and has comments.  I personally prefer the look of that 
resource. It isn's updated and is on 2.067.1.
Nov 20 2015
next sibling parent reply crimaniak <crimaniak gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 13:57:16 UTC, David DeWitt wrote:


 The "New Library Reference Preview" under Resources is much 
 cleaner and has comments.  I personally prefer the look of that 
 resource. It isn's updated and is on 2.067.1.


  Don't works for me now, problem with 
http://dlang.org/library/symbols.js both Chromium and Firefox. I 
have to wait for timeout for every page - symbols.js end is not 
detected by browser so he is waiting for next chunk until timeout.
  But yes, it's better.
Nov 20 2015
parent reply =?UTF-8?Q?S=c3=b6nke_Ludwig?= <sludwig rejectedsoftware.com> writes:
Am 20.11.2015 um 15:26 schrieb crimaniak:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 13:57:16 UTC, David DeWitt wrote:


 The "New Library Reference Preview" under Resources is much cleaner
 and has comments.  I personally prefer the look of that resource. It
 isn's updated and is on 2.067.1.


   Don't works for me now, problem with
 http://dlang.org/library/symbols.js both Chromium and Firefox. I have to
 wait for timeout for every page - symbols.js end is not detected by
 browser so he is waiting for next chunk until timeout.
   But yes, it's better.


I couldn't reproduce this with either Chrome/Firefox/Opera on 
Windows/Linux/Mac and I don't really have an idea what might be wrong, 
since symbols.js is just an ordinary file like everything else. Could 
this be something local getting in the way, such as a proxy server, a 
script blocker or similar?
Nov 23 2015
parent crimaniak <crimaniak gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 23 November 2015 at 15:16:49 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:


   Don't works for me now, problem with
 http://dlang.org/library/symbols.js both Chromium and Firefox.





 I couldn't reproduce this with either Chrome/Firefox/Opera on


...

 Could this be something local getting in the way, such as a 
 proxy server, a script blocker or similar?


  Yes! I find the reason. This is my ibVPN provider. Now I think 
they have problem with big javascript files (symbols.js is 724 Kb 
is size).
BTW, I check content of file and find very low entropy level 
here. Such amount of information can be transferred in smaller 
file.
Nov 26 2015
prev sibling parent =?UTF-8?Q?S=c3=b6nke_Ludwig?= <sludwig rejectedsoftware.com> writes:
Am 20.11.2015 um 14:57 schrieb David DeWitt:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 12:52:15 UTC, crimaniak wrote:

 Library reference is not very good too. In my previous try with D I
 even made a browser extension to show classes, functions, variables,
 etc. in 'jump to' section with different backgrounds. The reference
 should definitely be more fine grained and is equipped with user
 comments, which are extremely useful. See PHP document pages for
 example
 http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.session-set-cookie-params.php


 The "New Library Reference Preview" under Resources is much cleaner and
 has comments.  I personally prefer the look of that resource. It isn's
 updated and is on 2.067.1.


Oh, *now* I got it. The version number in the navigation area still says 
"2.067.1" - this has been a mistake made during the transition to the 
new website style. The contents are actually up to date, though, it's 
just the number. I'll fix that.
Nov 21 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 08:51:13 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 01:28:00 UTC, rsw0x wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 00:47:17 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 On Thursday, 19 November 2015 at 12:28:44 UTC, Andrei 
 Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 11/18/2015 11:02 PM, Saurabh Das wrote:

 [...]


 Generally a language reference is not good for learning a 
 language. -- Andrei


 IE. There's nothing on the D website that is "good for 
 learning" D.

 There's an offsite tutorial aimed at "absolute begginers".

 ****ing great set of options aint it.


 Ali's book is not a tutorial or aimed at absolute beginners, 
 it's /the/ material for learning D and in my opinion a great 
 reference book.


 It says on the website and I quote... "a great starting point 
 for absolute beginners"

 But the fundamental problem and what everyone seems to be 
 refusing to acknowledge is that in spite of what *you think 
 people should be doing* many visitors are ending up using 
 language reference to learn D.

 Or they use that reference to get their first impressions.

 It's like going to a restaurant and being given the recipes 
 instead of the menu.

 But keep burying you heads in the ground.


Would you bother to define "beginners"? Someone studying biology 
who has to use some script like stuff to process DNA sequences, 
with no programming experience at all? Or someone who comes from 
C++ and wants to try something different? Someone who's 
interested in programming and wants to write apps for mobile 
phones?

My experience is that people who come to D already know other 
programming languages (and that's basically why they end up here).
Nov 20 2015
next sibling parent Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 11:44:02 UTC, Chris wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 08:51:13 UTC, Warwick wrote:


This example makes no sense to a programming novice:

// Sort lines
import std.stdio;
import std.array;
import std.algorithm;

void main()
{
     stdin
         .byLine(KeepTerminator.yes)
         .map!(a => a.idup)
         .array
         .sort
         .copy(
             stdout.lockingTextWriter());
}

But programming novices are taught programming in a bad way. A 
lot of programming books are full of "step by step" code which 
doesn't make sense in the real world and only spoils people for 
the rest of their programming life.

I think the most important thing is to teach people the concepts 
behind D. Not just 'writeln("Hello, world!");' and be happy code.

The example above illustrates chained programming with ranges and 
components. A > B > C = D!. This is what we have to explain 
first. People will expect "Hello, world!", but if we want people 
to use D, we'll have to teach the concepts as well, and explain 
why D has those concepts. This is the hardest bit. People prefer 
rules to explanations.
Nov 20 2015
prev sibling parent Warwick <warwick warwick.com> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 11:44:02 UTC, Chris wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 08:51:13 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 But keep burying you heads in the ground.


 Would you bother to define "beginners"?


The getting started page says.. "absolute begginners" and IIRC 
"does not assume any prior programming experience". Or something 
like that.

It's not my definition.
Nov 20 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Jack Stouffer <jack jackstouffer.com> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 08:51:13 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 many visitors are ending up using language reference to learn D.

 Or they use that reference to get their first impressions.


Then they're fools.

In order to go to the link "D Reference" on dlang.org, your eyes 
have to scan past the "Getting Started" link and you have to 
purposely decide not to click on it. If I wanted to get up and 
running with a language, I wouldn't ignore the page that was 
obviously meant to help me.

Even if they didn't see the link, the FIRST result if you google 
"D language tutorial" is Ali's book. I'm really not sure what 
else can be done to help people.
Nov 20 2015
next sibling parent reply bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 14:15:32 UTC, Jack Stouffer wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 08:51:13 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 many visitors are ending up using language reference to learn 
 D.

 Or they use that reference to get their first impressions.


 Then they're fools.

 In order to go to the link "D Reference" on dlang.org, your 
 eyes have to scan past the "Getting Started" link and you have 
 to purposely decide not to click on it. If I wanted to get up 
 and running with a language, I wouldn't ignore the page that 
 was obviously meant to help me.

 Even if they didn't see the link, the FIRST result if you 
 google "D language tutorial" is Ali's book. I'm really not sure 
 what else can be done to help people.


I agree. There's not a lot more that I can see that needs to be 
changed on the website. And Ali's book is really good. Plus, the 
forum is friendly.
Nov 20 2015
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 11/20/2015 09:37 AM, bachmeier wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 14:15:32 UTC, Jack Stouffer wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 08:51:13 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 many visitors are ending up using language reference to learn D.

 Or they use that reference to get their first impressions.


 Then they're fools.

 In order to go to the link "D Reference" on dlang.org, your eyes have
 to scan past the "Getting Started" link and you have to purposely
 decide not to click on it. If I wanted to get up and running with a
 language, I wouldn't ignore the page that was obviously meant to help me.

 Even if they didn't see the link, the FIRST result if you google "D
 language tutorial" is Ali's book. I'm really not sure what else can be
 done to help people.


 I agree. There's not a lot more that I can see that needs to be changed
 on the website. And Ali's book is really good. Plus, the forum is friendly.


One thing we need to do is deemphasize the "Language Reference" entry in 
the left menu and promote Ali's book to top level. -- Andrei
Nov 20 2015
next sibling parent Wyatt <wyatt.epp gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 15:12:13 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 One thing we need to do is deemphasize the "Language Reference" 
 entry in the left menu and promote Ali's book to top level. -- 
 Andrei


In that case, if he were willing, might it be worthwhile to host 
it for him?  Maybe apply the usual dlang.org styling to it, as 
well?

I'm not sure how common it really is for the "officially-blessed" 
tutorial to live on an entirely different domain, but it seems 
like something that would be viewed as "less professional".

-Wyatt
Nov 20 2015
prev sibling parent reply bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 15:12:13 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 One thing we need to do is deemphasize the "Language Reference" 
 entry in the left menu and promote Ali's book to top level. -- 
 Andrei


If so, then the wiki should also be promoted to top level.
Nov 22 2015
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 11/22/15 8:47 PM, bachmeier wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 15:12:13 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 One thing we need to do is deemphasize the "Language Reference" entry
 in the left menu and promote Ali's book to top level. -- Andrei


 If so, then the wiki should also be promoted to top level.


Good idea. Please do it! -- Andrei
Nov 22 2015
next sibling parent reply bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Monday, 23 November 2015 at 02:24:31 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 On 11/22/15 8:47 PM, bachmeier wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 15:12:13 UTC, Andrei 
 Alexandrescu wrote:

 One thing we need to do is deemphasize the "Language 
 Reference" entry
 in the left menu and promote Ali's book to top level. -- 
 Andrei


 If so, then the wiki should also be promoted to top level.


 Good idea. Please do it! -- Andrei


Okay. I'll do it tomorrow. The sidebar will be

Download
Getting Started
Official Tutorial
Wiki
Change Log
.
.
.

Should I move the "D Reference" link to "Resources" as well, 
since you want to get it off the top level?
Nov 22 2015
next sibling parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 11/22/2015 11:16 PM, bachmeier wrote:

 Should I move the "D Reference" link to "Resources" as well, since you
 want to get it off the top level?


Let's leave it at top level. Thx! -- Andrei
Nov 22 2015
prev sibling parent reply Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2015-11-23 05:16, bachmeier wrote:


 Okay. I'll do it tomorrow. The sidebar will be

 Download
 Getting Started
 Official Tutorial
 Wiki
 Change Log


I think there should be a "Contribute" menu item at the top level.

Is it necessary to have "Change Log" at the top level? Is that perhaps 
better located in the download section?

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Nov 23 2015
next sibling parent bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Monday, 23 November 2015 at 08:09:12 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:

 On 2015-11-23 05:16, bachmeier wrote:


 Okay. I'll do it tomorrow. The sidebar will be

 Download
 Getting Started
 Official Tutorial
 Wiki
 Change Log


 I think there should be a "Contribute" menu item at the top 
 level.


I agree, but I do prefer "Get Involved" rather than "Contribute".


 Is it necessary to have "Change Log" at the top level? Is that 
 perhaps better located in the download section?


I had the same thought but didn't want to push for so many 
changes here. This conversation shouldn't be buried inside a 
thread on a different topic. Ultimately, Andrei and Walter are 
the ones that decide what goes on the front page, but others will 
have an opinion.
Nov 23 2015
prev sibling parent bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Monday, 23 November 2015 at 08:09:12 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:


 Is it necessary to have "Change Log" at the top level? Is that 
 perhaps better located in the download section?


Actually, I just checked, and it's already in the download 
section. The top-level menu item could be deleted.
Nov 23 2015
prev sibling parent bachmeier <no spam.com> writes:
On Monday, 23 November 2015 at 02:24:31 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 If so, then the wiki should also be promoted to top level.


 Good idea. Please do it! -- Andrei


https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/1156
Nov 23 2015
prev sibling parent reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 14:15:32 UTC, Jack Stouffer wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 08:51:13 UTC, Warwick wrote:

 many visitors are ending up using language reference to learn 
 D.

 Or they use that reference to get their first impressions.


 Then they're fools.

 In order to go to the link "D Reference" on dlang.org, your 
 eyes have to scan past the "Getting Started" link and you have 
 to purposely decide not to click on it. If I wanted to get up 
 and running with a language, I wouldn't ignore the page that 
 was obviously meant to help me.

 Even if they didn't see the link, the FIRST result if you 
 google "D language tutorial" is Ali's book. I'm really not sure 
 what else can be done to help people.


Yep, what can one say.

1. Who goes to the language reference, when they want to _learn_ 
a language?
2. If you really want to learn a language, you will learn it. 
There are enough resources for D now, there's room for 
improvement, but there always is.

I know, catering for the "one second attention span" crowd is a 
recipe for success, if you deal with PHP or JS. But D is not in 
that league. Even if you cater for them, they will soon be 
frustrated anyway, because for D you'll need a deeper 
understanding of things, sooner or later.
Nov 20 2015
next sibling parent Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
There you go:

http://ddili.org/ders/d.en/foreword2.html

Beginners and experienced programmers, you're welcome!
Nov 20 2015
prev sibling parent reply Chris Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> writes:
On Fri, 20 Nov 2015 14:41:04 +0000, Chris wrote:

 Yep, what can one say.
 
 1. Who goes to the language reference, when they want to _learn_ a
 language?


It's the obvious place if you're familiar with other programming 
languages. Tutorials tend to be geared toward people who have little to 
no programming experience, who view learning a new language (even in a 
paradigm they're used to) as a large thing.

We were all there once, but we're not all there now. When I learn a new 
language, I want typically 20-30 lines of example code and a language 
reference. I can start writing code after reading a short example, and I 
can use the language reference to fill in the remaining gaps. The 
language reference is usually both denser and better categorized for my 
needs.


 2. If you really want to learn a language, you will learn it. There are
 enough resources for D now, there's room for improvement, but there
 always is.


I was choosing between programming languages a while ago, most of which I 
hadn't used before. For each of them, it wasn't the case that I wanted to 
learn them, but I knew I probably wanted to use one of them.

If any of them were as obtuse to learn as D, I would have skipped past 
them post haste.

If I'm evaluating a programming language to start using at work, I will 
evaluate it on how easy it is for me to accomplish things in that 
language and how easy it will be for my coworkers to start using the 
language. My coworkers mostly know Ruby and are just tentatively 
switching to Java. Moving to Haskell probably isn't an option despite the 
existence of decent tutorials, but D is similar enough that they could 
learn -- assuming there are good tutorials readily available.


 I know, catering for the "one second attention span" crowd is a recipe
 for success, if you deal with PHP or JS. But D is not in that league.
 Even if you cater for them, they will soon be frustrated anyway, because
 for D you'll need a deeper understanding of things, sooner or later.


You were contemptuous toward PHP and JavaScript, and now you are being 
contemptuous toward people who are potentially interested in learning D. 
Please be more respectful.
Nov 20 2015
next sibling parent reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 16:39:52 UTC, Chris Wright wrote:

 On Fri, 20 Nov 2015 14:41:04 +0000, Chris wrote:

 Yep, what can one say.
 
 1. Who goes to the language reference, when they want to 
 _learn_ a language?


 It's the obvious place if you're familiar with other 
 programming languages. Tutorials tend to be geared toward 
 people who have little to no programming experience, who view 
 learning a new language (even in a paradigm they're used to) as 
 a large thing.

 We were all there once, but we're not all there now. When I 
 learn a new language, I want typically 20-30 lines of example 
 code and a language reference. I can start writing code after 
 reading a short example, and I can use the language reference 
 to fill in the remaining gaps. The language reference is 
 usually both denser and better categorized for my needs.


 2. If you really want to learn a language, you will learn it. 
 There are enough resources for D now, there's room for 
 improvement, but there always is.


 I was choosing between programming languages a while ago, most 
 of which I hadn't used before. For each of them, it wasn't the 
 case that I wanted to learn them, but I knew I probably wanted 
 to use one of them.

 If any of them were as obtuse to learn as D, I would have 
 skipped past them post haste.

 If I'm evaluating a programming language to start using at 
 work, I will evaluate it on how easy it is for me to accomplish 
 things in that language and how easy it will be for my 
 coworkers to start using the language. My coworkers mostly know 
 Ruby and are just tentatively switching to Java. Moving to 
 Haskell probably isn't an option despite the existence of 
 decent tutorials, but D is similar enough that they could learn 
 -- assuming there are good tutorials readily available.


 I know, catering for the "one second attention span" crowd is 
 a recipe for success, if you deal with PHP or JS. But D is not 
 in that league. Even if you cater for them, they will soon be 
 frustrated anyway, because for D you'll need a deeper 
 understanding of things, sooner or later.


 You were contemptuous toward PHP and JavaScript, and now you 
 are being contemptuous toward people who are potentially 
 interested in learning D. Please be more respectful.


Have you been able to learn D? Yes or no? I'm sorry, if I'm not 
always politically correct and I'm the first one to understand 
the needs of programming novices, because we've all been there 
(as you pointed out). My point is that for D you will need a 
deeper understanding of things, and Ali's book provides this. D 
is not like Javscript where type "alert('Hello, world!');" and go 
"Yeah!". One cannot always blame D and its community for mistakes 
and/or bad choices people make.
Nov 20 2015
next sibling parent reply David DeWitt <dkdewitt gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 16:59:30 UTC, Chris wrote:



 Have you been able to learn D? Yes or no? I'm sorry, if I'm not 
 always politically correct and I'm the first one to understand 
 the needs of programming novices, because we've all been there 
 (as you pointed out). My point is that for D you will need a 
 deeper understanding of things, and Ali's book provides this. D 
 is not like Javscript where type "alert('Hello, world!');" and 
 go "Yeah!". One cannot always blame D and its community for 
 mistakes and/or bad choices people make.



Maybe the community (20 or so ppl) to write some quick tutorials 
on common tasks like socket programming, file system stuff, 
memory, etc... and we just combine them in a common format on the 
D site (wiki maybe) and refer learners to that.   Alot of ground 
could be covered if we just organize that and get it done.  We 
really would need to create a section and decide on what topics 
to cover and get on it.
Nov 20 2015
parent Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 17:06:52 UTC, David DeWitt wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 16:59:30 UTC, Chris wrote:



 Have you been able to learn D? Yes or no? I'm sorry, if I'm 
 not always politically correct and I'm the first one to 
 understand the needs of programming novices, because we've all 
 been there (as you pointed out). My point is that for D you 
 will need a deeper understanding of things, and Ali's book 
 provides this. D is not like Javscript where type 
 "alert('Hello, world!');" and go "Yeah!". One cannot always 
 blame D and its community for mistakes and/or bad choices 
 people make.



 Maybe the community (20 or so ppl) to write some quick 
 tutorials on common tasks like socket programming, file system 
 stuff, memory, etc... and we just combine them in a common 
 format on the D site (wiki maybe) and refer learners to that.   
 Alot of ground could be covered if we just organize that and 
 get it done.  We really would need to create a section and 
 decide on what topics to cover and get on it.


That's a good idea. We should ask people what they need most 
urgently. String manipulation is one. Then arrays, sockets, 
concurrency? ... please continue. Let's make a thread about "how 
do want to use D and what are the most urgent things for you?"
Nov 20 2015
prev sibling parent reply Chris Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> writes:
On Fri, 20 Nov 2015 16:59:28 +0000, Chris wrote:


 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 16:39:52 UTC, Chris Wright wrote:

 On Fri, 20 Nov 2015 14:41:04 +0000, Chris wrote:

 Yep, what can one say.
 
 1. Who goes to the language reference, when they want to _learn_ a
 language?


 It's the obvious place if you're familiar with other programming
 languages. Tutorials tend to be geared toward people who have little to
 no programming experience, who view learning a new language (even in a
 paradigm they're used to) as a large thing.

 We were all there once, but we're not all there now. When I learn a new
 language, I want typically 20-30 lines of example code and a language
 reference. I can start writing code after reading a short example, and
 I can use the language reference to fill in the remaining gaps. The
 language reference is usually both denser and better categorized for my
 needs.


 2. If you really want to learn a language, you will learn it. There
 are enough resources for D now, there's room for improvement, but
 there always is.


 I was choosing between programming languages a while ago, most of which
 I hadn't used before. For each of them, it wasn't the case that I
 wanted to learn them, but I knew I probably wanted to use one of them.

 If any of them were as obtuse to learn as D, I would have skipped past
 them post haste.

 If I'm evaluating a programming language to start using at work, I will
 evaluate it on how easy it is for me to accomplish things in that
 language and how easy it will be for my coworkers to start using the
 language. My coworkers mostly know Ruby and are just tentatively
 switching to Java. Moving to Haskell probably isn't an option despite
 the existence of decent tutorials, but D is similar enough that they
 could learn -- assuming there are good tutorials readily available.


 I know, catering for the "one second attention span" crowd is a recipe
 for success, if you deal with PHP or JS. But D is not in that league.
 Even if you cater for them, they will soon be frustrated anyway,
 because for D you'll need a deeper understanding of things, sooner or
 later.


 You were contemptuous toward PHP and JavaScript, and now you are being
 contemptuous toward people who are potentially interested in learning
 D. Please be more respectful.


 
 Have you been able to learn D? Yes or no?


I have an unusually large tolerance for pain in technical terms. It tends 
to take me a long time to realize that it's hard to use a programming 
language. Recently, for instance, I tried using Nim. I spent several 
months on it before I realized that I was debugging library errors and 
was about to dive into the compiler's semantic analysis code to fix a 
problem and it was stopping me from writing the code I wanted to write. 
That sort of tolerance, that sort of ignorance about the painfulness of a 
situation, let me learn D ten years ago.

I also spent a fair bit of time learning D. It was my own time, no one 
else's. I was free to spend months learning the language, if that was 
what it took.

And again, I learned probably 4-5 programming languages last year. My 
coworkers, some of them, were having issues switching from Ruby to Java. 
They're quite competent at what they do, and they might be better at Ruby 
than I ever will be, but they won't quickly switch in the best case. With 
the existing tutorials, it'd be far worse.

This alone would suffice to make D not be a viable option for my 
employer. Of course, we also have to contend with the poor library 
situation.


 I'm sorry, if


If your apology starts with "I'm sorry if", it's not an apology, and most 
of the time you're better off omitting the statement entirely.


 I'm not always politically correct


Most of the time, "politically correct" means being respectful to others, 
except the speaker intends to indicate that that is a bad thing.


 and I'm the first one to understand the needs of
 programming novices, because we've all been there (as you pointed out).


Which gives you no special advantage over anyone else, so I'm having a 
hard time seeing how you're "the first one to understand the needs of 
programming novices", especially since you seem to be advocating against 
making more tutorials and making them easier to find.


 My point is that for D you will need a deeper understanding of things,
 and Ali's book provides this.


Before you seemed to be saying that the language reference provides this. 
Ali's book is much heavier in prose and provides much more guidance than 
the language reference.

Making Ali's book much more prominent, and especially more prominent than 
the language reference, would be awesome. Python, for instance, has a 
language reference, but it recommends tutorials for you first, and while 
it shows you the language reference, it warns that it can be rather dry.


 D is not like Javscript where type
 "alert('Hello, world!');" and go "Yeah!". One cannot always blame D and
 its community for mistakes and/or bad choices people make.


And this has nothing to do with the quality of tutorials or how hard it 
would be to get my coworkers to start using D.
Nov 20 2015
parent reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 20:02:34 UTC, Chris Wright wrote:

 On Fri, 20 Nov 2015 16:59:28 +0000, Chris wrote:


 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 16:39:52 UTC, Chris Wright 
 wrote:

 On Fri, 20 Nov 2015 14:41:04 +0000, Chris wrote:

 Yep, what can one say.
 
 1. Who goes to the language reference, when they want to 
 _learn_ a language?


 It's the obvious place if you're familiar with other 
 programming languages. Tutorials tend to be geared toward 
 people who have little to no programming experience, who view 
 learning a new language (even in a paradigm they're used to) 
 as a large thing.

 We were all there once, but we're not all there now. When I 
 learn a new language, I want typically 20-30 lines of example 
 code and a language reference. I can start writing code after 
 reading a short example, and I can use the language reference 
 to fill in the remaining gaps. The language reference is 
 usually both denser and better categorized for my needs.


 2. If you really want to learn a language, you will learn 
 it. There are enough resources for D now, there's room for 
 improvement, but there always is.


 I was choosing between programming languages a while ago, 
 most of which I hadn't used before. For each of them, it 
 wasn't the case that I wanted to learn them, but I knew I 
 probably wanted to use one of them.

 If any of them were as obtuse to learn as D, I would have 
 skipped past them post haste.

 If I'm evaluating a programming language to start using at 
 work, I will evaluate it on how easy it is for me to 
 accomplish things in that language and how easy it will be 
 for my coworkers to start using the language. My coworkers 
 mostly know Ruby and are just tentatively switching to Java. 
 Moving to Haskell probably isn't an option despite the 
 existence of decent tutorials, but D is similar enough that 
 they could learn -- assuming there are good tutorials readily 
 available.


 I know, catering for the "one second attention span" crowd 
 is a recipe for success, if you deal with PHP or JS. But D 
 is not in that league. Even if you cater for them, they will 
 soon be frustrated anyway, because for D you'll need a 
 deeper understanding of things, sooner or later.


 You were contemptuous toward PHP and JavaScript, and now you 
 are being contemptuous toward people who are potentially 
 interested in learning D. Please be more respectful.


 
 Have you been able to learn D? Yes or no?


 I have an unusually large tolerance for pain in technical 
 terms. It tends to take me a long time to realize that it's 
 hard to use a programming language. Recently, for instance, I 
 tried using Nim. I spent several months on it before I realized 
 that I was debugging library errors and was about to dive into 
 the compiler's semantic analysis code to fix a problem and it 
 was stopping me from writing the code I wanted to write. That 
 sort of tolerance, that sort of ignorance about the painfulness 
 of a situation, let me learn D ten years ago.

 I also spent a fair bit of time learning D. It was my own time, 
 no one else's. I was free to spend months learning the 
 language, if that was what it took.


Fair play to you.


 And again, I learned probably 4-5 programming languages last 
 year. My coworkers, some of them, were having issues switching 
 from Ruby to Java. They're quite competent at what they do, and 
 they might be better at Ruby than I ever will be, but they 
 won't quickly switch in the best case. With the existing 
 tutorials, it'd be far worse.

 This alone would suffice to make D not be a viable option for 
 my employer. Of course, we also have to contend with the poor 
 library situation.


I have the feeling that unlike you, people don't really try. I 
know that people often look at D, but don't pay much attention to 
what the page says, because it's not a "fancy". I remember that 
Ruby was hyped and it was indeed a "hipster" language (which is 
not a comment on its quality or merits). So there are other 
factors at work here. D is in a difficult position, because it's 
so advanced that it is of interest to people coming from C++, at 
the same time things can be done in D as easily as in Python or 
Ruby.

The problem is that the latter crowd (scripting people) will 
sooner or later be disappointed with D, if they have no 
experience with more low level stuff and programming theory, 
because at a certain point D gets demanding and it takes a while 
to grasp all the concepts.


 I'm sorry, if


 If your apology starts with "I'm sorry if", it's not an 
 apology, and most of the time you're better off omitting the 
 statement entirely.


You're right, it wasn't an apology, because I don't feel I have 
anything to apologize for. If people take offense when I bash a 
language or say that D is a bit more demanding than Javascript, 
it is not my problem. I find it rather weird that people identify 
with a certain language or technology. That's not how we should 
look at technology, most certainly not.


 I'm not always politically correct


 Most of the time, "politically correct" means being respectful 
 to others, except the speaker intends to indicate that that is 
 a bad thing.


Political correctness tries to censor the free expression of 
thoughts and has nothing to do with being respectful or not. 
Being politically correct means to censor one's own thoughts out 
of fear of being told off. It is often only a way to dismiss 
arguments and opinions in order not to have to deal with them.


 and I'm the first one to understand the needs of
 programming novices, because we've all been there (as you 
 pointed out).


 Which gives you no special advantage over anyone else, so I'm 
 having a hard time seeing how you're "the first one to 
 understand the needs of programming novices", especially since 
 you seem to be advocating against making more tutorials and 
 making them easier to find.


 My point is that for D you will need a deeper understanding of 
 things, and Ali's book provides this.


 Before you seemed to be saying that the language reference 
 provides this.


Where did I say this?


 Ali's book is much heavier in prose and provides much more 
 guidance than the language reference.

 Making Ali's book much more prominent, and especially more 
 prominent than the language reference, would be awesome. 
 Python, for instance, has a language reference, but it 
 recommends tutorials for you first, and while it shows you the 
 language reference, it warns that it can be rather dry.


Let's do that.


 D is not like Javscript where type
 "alert('Hello, world!');" and go "Yeah!". One cannot always 
 blame D and
 its community for mistakes and/or bad choices people make.


 And this has nothing to do with the quality of tutorials or how 
 hard it would be to get my coworkers to start using D.
Nov 22 2015
parent reply Chris Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> writes:
 I'm not always politically correct


 Most of the time, "politically correct" means being respectful to
 others, except the speaker intends to indicate that that is a bad
 thing.


 
 Political correctness tries to censor the free expression of thoughts
 and has nothing to do with being respectful or not. Being politically
 correct means to censor one's own thoughts out of fear of being told
 off.


This is your line of objection when I asked you to be respectful toward 
people who might want to learn D.

Normal people are polite and respectful out of common human decency. Does 
this sometimes mean not uttering everything that passes through your 
head? Of course. But the motivation comes from wanting to work well with 
others and even from caring about other people. Not fear of being told 
off.

Does this not work for you?
Nov 23 2015
next sibling parent default0 <Kevin.Labschek gmx.de> writes:
On Monday, 23 November 2015 at 20:21:37 UTC, Chris Wright wrote:

 This is your line of objection when I asked you to be 
 respectful toward people who might want to learn D.

 Normal people are polite and respectful out of common human 
 decency. Does this sometimes mean not uttering everything that 
 passes through your head? Of course. But the motivation comes 
 from wanting to work well with others and even from caring 
 about other people. Not fear of being told off.

 Does this not work for you?


Chiming in unasked and unwanted from the side here: I personally 
believe it's better to actually say the things you think straight 
up instead of trying to sugarcoat things so people are less 
offended. I've been reading this forum for a while now, and 
there's often people arguing and accusing each other, even about 
trivial things, but from what I've seen these types of 
discussions have brought up and subsequently improved on real 
problems not too rarely.

Plus, anyone getting offended by people ranting on the internet 
is doing something wrong imho.
Nov 23 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Monday, 23 November 2015 at 20:21:37 UTC, Chris Wright wrote:

 I'm not always politically correct


 Most of the time, "politically correct" means being 
 respectful to others, except the speaker intends to indicate 
 that that is a bad thing.


 
 Political correctness tries to censor the free expression of 
 thoughts and has nothing to do with being respectful or not. 
 Being politically correct means to censor one's own thoughts 
 out of fear of being told off.


 This is your line of objection when I asked you to be 
 respectful toward people who might want to learn D.


Have I ever been disrespectful toward people who want to learn D? 
Have I ever told people not to learn D? Where did you get that 
idea? Seriously, where?

I merely objected to comparing (domain specific) scripting 
languages like JS and PHP to D and I gave my reasons for it in 
one of my posts. I strongly warn against drawing conclusions from 
JS's and PHP's success story for D and how to market it. D will 
never gain traction in the same way and for the same reasons JS 
and PHP gained traction in the late 90ies. Please try to think 
about the points I made instead of feeling offended, because you 
may happen to use PHP or JS or both (or know someone who does).


 Normal people are polite and respectful out of common human 
 decency. Does this sometimes mean not uttering everything that 
 passes through your head? Of course. But the motivation comes 
 from wanting to work well with others and even from caring 
 about other people. Not fear of being told off.


Only, I wasn't talking about people. What does bashing a language 
have to do with lack of respect? Bashing languages is normal in 
the programming world and it does not equal bashing the _users_ 
of the language in question, which I fear you believe. I too have 
to use JS, out of necessity, and PHP for that matter. Using 
mediocre, messy or unspectacular languages doesn't mean you're an 
idiot.


 Does this not work for you?


Oh please. Do you want to shame me? Really? Will not work. 
Seriously.
Nov 23 2015
prev sibling parent reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Monday, 23 November 2015 at 20:21:37 UTC, Chris Wright wrote:

 I'm not always politically correct


 Most of the time, "politically correct" means being 
 respectful to others, except the speaker intends to indicate 
 that that is a bad thing.


 
 Political correctness tries to censor the free expression of 
 thoughts and has nothing to do with being respectful or not. 
 Being politically correct means to censor one's own thoughts 
 out of fear of being told off.


 This is your line of objection when I asked you to be 
 respectful toward people who might want to learn D.

 Normal people are polite and respectful out of common human 
 decency. Does this sometimes mean not uttering everything that 
 passes through your head? Of course. But the motivation comes 
 from wanting to work well with others and even from caring 
 about other people. Not fear of being told off.

 Does this not work for you?


Do not watch this, if you identify with any of the following 
languages:

C, C++, Perl, Java, Scala, JavaScript, Go, Rust, bash, Python (2 


http://bjorn.tipling.com/if-programming-languages-were-weapons

Else, you can just have a laugh.
Nov 23 2015
parent Timon Gehr <timon.gehr gmx.ch> writes:
On 11/23/2015 11:03 PM, Chris wrote:

 ...

 Do not watch this, if you identify with any of the following languages:

 C, C++, Perl, Java, Scala, JavaScript, Go, Rust, bash, Python (2 and 3),


 http://bjorn.tipling.com/if-programming-languages-were-weapons

 Else, you can just have a laugh.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Rj49rmc01Hs#t=303
Nov 28 2015
prev sibling parent reply jmh530 <john.michael.hall gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 16:39:52 UTC, Chris Wright wrote:

 On Fri, 20 Nov 2015 14:41:04 +0000, Chris wrote:

 Yep, what can one say.
 
 1. Who goes to the language reference, when they want to 
 _learn_ a language?


 It's the obvious place if you're familiar with other 
 programming languages. Tutorials tend to be geared toward 
 people who have little to no programming experience, who view 
 learning a new language (even in a paradigm they're used to) as 
 a large thing.


It seems clear that there are a variety of different types of 
people who would want to learn the language. Maybe split up the 
Getting Started page to a few sections, like "new programmers", 
"intermediate programmers", "expert programmers".
Nov 20 2015
parent reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 17:26:40 UTC, jmh530 wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 16:39:52 UTC, Chris Wright wrote:

 On Fri, 20 Nov 2015 14:41:04 +0000, Chris wrote:

 Yep, what can one say.
 
 1. Who goes to the language reference, when they want to 
 _learn_ a language?


 It's the obvious place if you're familiar with other 
 programming languages. Tutorials tend to be geared toward 
 people who have little to no programming experience, who view 
 learning a new language (even in a paradigm they're used to) 
 as a large thing.


 It seems clear that there are a variety of different types of 
 people who would want to learn the language. Maybe split up the 
 Getting Started page to a few sections, like "new programmers", 
 "intermediate programmers", "expert programmers".


IMO, it's not a good idea to classify people like that, because 
even a beginner might need advanced stuff and they might ignore 
the "advanced" section. Also, people might rate themselves as 
"intermediate" while they actually do pretty advanced stuff. 
Let's order by topic. It should come up when someone types "dlang 
set up socket", and so on.
Nov 20 2015
parent reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 17:57:06 UTC, Chris wrote:


 It seems clear that there are a variety of different types of 
 people who would want to learn the language. Maybe split up 
 the Getting Started page to a few sections, like "new 
 programmers", "intermediate programmers", "expert programmers".


 IMO, it's not a good idea to classify people like that, because 
 even a beginner might need advanced stuff and they might ignore 
 the "advanced" section. Also, people might rate themselves as 
 "intermediate" while they actually do pretty advanced stuff. 
 Let's order by topic. It should come up when someone types 
 "dlang set up socket", and so on.


One important thing is to direct people to the right library 
modules. This is something that really confuses people. 
std.algorithm covers a lot of stuff that people would expect 
elsewhere. I think std.string already tells people to go to 
std.algorithm, but an overview would be nice.

Strings

std.string, std.algorithm (std.ascii etc) with a short 
explanation.

Arrays

etc.

Basically a "Get sh*t done" page.
Nov 20 2015
parent Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 18:11:41 UTC, Chris wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 17:57:06 UTC, Chris wrote:


 It seems clear that there are a variety of different types of 
 people who would want to learn the language. Maybe split up 
 the Getting Started page to a few sections, like "new 
 programmers", "intermediate programmers", "expert 
 programmers".


 IMO, it's not a good idea to classify people like that, 
 because even a beginner might need advanced stuff and they 
 might ignore the "advanced" section. Also, people might rate 
 themselves as "intermediate" while they actually do pretty 
 advanced stuff. Let's order by topic. It should come up when 
 someone types "dlang set up socket", and so on.


 One important thing is to direct people to the right library 
 modules. This is something that really confuses people. 
 std.algorithm covers a lot of stuff that people would expect 
 elsewhere. I think std.string already tells people to go to 
 std.algorithm, but an overview would be nice.

 Strings

 std.string, std.algorithm (std.ascii etc) with a short 
 explanation.

 Arrays

 etc.

 Basically a "Get sh*t done" page.


To be clear with this I don't mean what's in the library section 
now like

"std.string 	Algorithms that work specifically with strings."

but something more practical, strings: wanna find a string in a 
string? Do this ...
Nov 20 2015
prev sibling parent reply bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 08:51:13 UTC, Warwick wrote:


 It says on the website and I quote... "a great starting point 
 for absolute beginners"

 But the fundamental problem and what everyone seems to be 
 refusing to acknowledge is that in spite of what *you think 
 people should be doing* many visitors are ending up using 
 language reference to learn D.

 Or they use that reference to get their first impressions.

 It's like going to a restaurant and being given the recipes 
 instead of the menu.

 But keep burying you heads in the ground.


Hence my post in this thread that we should be adding links to 
the relevant sections of Ali's book to the documentation. I will 
be doing so as time permits, but it's quite easy, so please do so 
when you see an opportunity.
Nov 20 2015
parent Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 14:34:10 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 08:51:13 UTC, Warwick wrote:


 It says on the website and I quote... "a great starting point 
 for absolute beginners"

 But the fundamental problem and what everyone seems to be 
 refusing to acknowledge is that in spite of what *you think 
 people should be doing* many visitors are ending up using 
 language reference to learn D.

 Or they use that reference to get their first impressions.

 It's like going to a restaurant and being given the recipes 
 instead of the menu.

 But keep burying you heads in the ground.


 Hence my post in this thread that we should be adding links to 
 the relevant sections of Ali's book to the documentation. I 
 will be doing so as time permits, but it's quite easy, so 
 please do so when you see an opportunity.


Good idea.
Nov 20 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent Gerald Jansen <gjansen ownmail.net> writes:
On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:34:18 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 Amid increased scrutiny it's important to focus on improving 
 documentation. ...


The example code snippets on the home page are great. They 
certainly impressed me favourably back this spring when I first 
got curious about D. It would be great if there were even more 
examples. (Could the curl example fetching weather info be 
revived?)

Of course it's disastrous if a newcomer has a look at an example, 
hits the "Run" button and gets back a vomit of incomprehensible 
error messages. The "Round floating point numbers" example is 
still in this camp and needs to be fixed (by someone who 
understands regular expressions better than me) [1].

Much work has been done in the past months to improve the 
infrastructure used to run the examples, but even more could be 
done. It would be great if there was an automated/continuous 
checking  mechanism to make sure all the examples run correctly. 
Maybe there could be some background functions (not displayed, 
for brevity) doing some input checking in order to handle the 
most common exceptions (eg. empty input).

[1] https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12210#c12
Nov 15 2015
prev sibling parent reply Chris Piker <fake fakeU.edu> writes:
On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:34:18 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 Amid increased scrutiny it's important to focus on improving 
 documentation. I suggest everyone in the community to consider 
 improving dlang.org in any way.


I've recently switched from Python to D for new development at my 
worksite.  Though I'm way too new to D to help with most of the 
documentation tasks mentioned on this thread, I have been 
compiling a list of Phobos equivalents to Python standard library 
functions.  Would this information of any use to the D community, 
or is it too pedestrian for your purposes?  If useful, is the 
dlang wiki the appropriate location to submit such a list?

Thanks for all your hard work on D, it's a fine toolset.
Nov 18 2015
next sibling parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 11/18/2015 11:35 AM, Chris Piker wrote:

 On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:34:18 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 Amid increased scrutiny it's important to focus on improving
 documentation. I suggest everyone in the community to consider
 improving dlang.org in any way.


 I've recently switched from Python to D for new development at my
 worksite.  Though I'm way too new to D to help with most of the
 documentation tasks mentioned on this thread, I have been compiling a
 list of Phobos equivalents to Python standard library functions.  Would
 this information of any use to the D community, or is it too pedestrian
 for your purposes?  If useful, is the dlang wiki the appropriate
 location to submit such a list?


Absolutely. You may want to start with a wiki page at 
http://wiki.dlang.org - tables are supported. Please post back here 
and/or on the announce forum. Thanks! -- Andrei
Nov 18 2015
prev sibling parent bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Wednesday, 18 November 2015 at 16:35:21 UTC, Chris Piker wrote:

 On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:34:18 UTC, Andrei 
 Alexandrescu wrote:

 Amid increased scrutiny it's important to focus on improving 
 documentation. I suggest everyone in the community to consider 
 improving dlang.org in any way.


 I've recently switched from Python to D for new development at 
 my worksite.  Though I'm way too new to D to help with most of 
 the documentation tasks mentioned on this thread, I have been 
 compiling a list of Phobos equivalents to Python standard 
 library functions.  Would this information of any use to the D 
 community, or is it too pedestrian for your purposes?  If 
 useful, is the dlang wiki the appropriate location to submit 
 such a list?

 Thanks for all your hard work on D, it's a fine toolset.


Please add it (or a link to it) on this page:

http://wiki.dlang.org/Programming_in_D_for_Python_Programmers

It sounds like you are putting together a great resource.
Nov 18 2015