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digitalmars.D.announce - Adventures in D Programming

reply Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw gdcproject.org> writes:
I was paged about a blog post from an old friend who floats 
around the circles in the Debian camp.

The author, Matthias, should be no stranger around these forums, 
though I was surprised to discover that I know him on OFTC too (I 
wonder if he knows this also).

For those who have been watching the talks at dconf, I think 
there should be nothing unexpected here.  But each time we hear 
from the same issues or conclusions being raised, it gives them 
more weight in the priority queue for what we need solving.

So Matthias, I'd like to give a thanks for your excellent post.  
And I hope you don't mind me posting it here.

http://blog.tenstral.net/2016/05/adventures-in-d-programming.html

For everyone else, hope you enjoy the read.

--
Iain
May 07 2016
next sibling parent Antonio Corbi <acorbi ggmail.xml> writes:
On Sunday, 8 May 2016 at 06:05:36 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 I was paged about a blog post from an old friend who floats 
 around the circles in the Debian camp.

 The author, Matthias, should be no stranger around these 
 forums, though I was surprised to discover that I know him on 
 OFTC too (I wonder if he knows this also).

 For those who have been watching the talks at dconf, I think 
 there should be nothing unexpected here.  But each time we hear 
 from the same issues or conclusions being raised, it gives them 
 more weight in the priority queue for what we need solving.

 So Matthias, I'd like to give a thanks for your excellent post.
  And I hope you don't mind me posting it here.

 http://blog.tenstral.net/2016/05/adventures-in-d-programming.html

 For everyone else, hope you enjoy the read.

 --
 Iain


Not only in his blog, even lwn.net mentions it!

Antonio
May 08 2016
prev sibling parent reply qznc <qznc web.de> writes:
On Sunday, 8 May 2016 at 06:05:36 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 http://blog.tenstral.net/2016/05/adventures-in-d-programming.html


Thanks, I missed that post until now.


"the documentation not matching the actual code is a bad 
experience for someone new to the language"

I would interpret that as a sign that we want multiple versions 
of documentation available on the website. For example, Python 
does that.

https://docs.python.org/3.4/contents.html

You see the "3.4" version in the URL and on the page top-left is 
a dropdown menu to switch between versions.

Has this been discussed for Phobos yet?
May 08 2016
next sibling parent reply Daniel Kozak via Digitalmars-d-announce writes:
Dne 8.5.2016 v 19:19 qznc via Digitalmars-d-announce napsal(a):


 On Sunday, 8 May 2016 at 06:05:36 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 http://blog.tenstral.net/2016/05/adventures-in-d-programming.html


 Thanks, I missed that post until now.


 "the documentation not matching the actual code is a bad experience 
 for someone new to the language"

 I would interpret that as a sign that we want multiple versions of 
 documentation available on the website. For example, Python does that.

 https://docs.python.org/3.4/contents.html

 You see the "3.4" version in the URL and on the page top-left is a 
 dropdown menu to switch between versions.

 Has this been discussed for Phobos yet?


I remember that I have mentioned that once here, but I thing there was 
not big interest at it :(
May 08 2016
parent reply Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 8 May 2016 at 19:09:07 UTC, Daniel Kozak wrote:

 I remember that I have mentioned that once here, but I thing 
 there was not big interest at it :(


I'm doing it on dpldocs.info as soon as I leave the alpha period 
(which is finally coming soon).
May 08 2016
next sibling parent Daniel Kozak via Digitalmars-d-announce writes:
Dne 8.5.2016 v 21:12 Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d-announce napsal(a):


 On Sunday, 8 May 2016 at 19:09:07 UTC, Daniel Kozak wrote:

 I remember that I have mentioned that once here, but I thing there 
 was not big interest at it :(


 I'm doing it on dpldocs.info as soon as I leave the alpha period 
 (which is finally coming soon).


You are awesome :)
May 08 2016
prev sibling parent wobbles <grogan.colin gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 8 May 2016 at 19:12:17 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 On Sunday, 8 May 2016 at 19:09:07 UTC, Daniel Kozak wrote:

 I remember that I have mentioned that once here, but I thing 
 there was not big interest at it :(


 I'm doing it on dpldocs.info as soon as I leave the alpha 
 period (which is finally coming soon).


I haven't logged on for a look in ages.
Have done so now, and they've come on leaps and bounds.

Really like the layout and styling of the different pages.
Jolly good show!
May 08 2016
prev sibling next sibling parent Daniel Kozak via Digitalmars-d-announce writes:
Dne 8.5.2016 v 21:09 Daniel Kozak napsal(a):


 Dne 8.5.2016 v 19:19 qznc via Digitalmars-d-announce napsal(a):


 On Sunday, 8 May 2016 at 06:05:36 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 http://blog.tenstral.net/2016/05/adventures-in-d-programming.html


 Thanks, I missed that post until now.


 "the documentation not matching the actual code is a bad experience 
 for someone new to the language"

 I would interpret that as a sign that we want multiple versions of 
 documentation available on the website. For example, Python does that.

 https://docs.python.org/3.4/contents.html

 You see the "3.4" version in the URL and on the page top-left is a 
 dropdown menu to switch between versions.

 Has this been discussed for Phobos yet?


 I remember that I have mentioned that once here, but I thing there was 
 not big interest at it :(


http://forum.dlang.org/post/srhttrxrqawhspibdlrj forum.dlang.org
May 08 2016
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 5/8/16 8:19 PM, qznc wrote:

 On Sunday, 8 May 2016 at 06:05:36 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 http://blog.tenstral.net/2016/05/adventures-in-d-programming.html


 Thanks, I missed that post until now.


 "the documentation not matching the actual code is a bad experience for
 someone new to the language"

 I would interpret that as a sign that we want multiple versions of
 documentation available on the website. For example, Python does that.

 https://docs.python.org/3.4/contents.html

 You see the "3.4" version in the URL and on the page top-left is a
 dropdown menu to switch between versions.

 Has this been discussed for Phobos yet?


No, but it's been on my mind for a while. -- Andrei
May 08 2016
parent reply "H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d-announce" writes:
On Sun, May 08, 2016 at 10:45:51PM +0300, Andrei Alexandrescu via
Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:

 On 5/8/16 8:19 PM, qznc wrote:

On Sunday, 8 May 2016 at 06:05:36 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:

http://blog.tenstral.net/2016/05/adventures-in-d-programming.html


Thanks, I missed that post until now.


"the documentation not matching the actual code is a bad experience
for someone new to the language"

I would interpret that as a sign that we want multiple versions of
documentation available on the website. For example, Python does
that.

https://docs.python.org/3.4/contents.html

You see the "3.4" version in the URL and on the page top-left is a
dropdown menu to switch between versions.

Has this been discussed for Phobos yet?


 
 No, but it's been on my mind for a while. -- Andrei


AFAICT, it shouldn't be super hard to do this. We're already building
Phobos docs in phobos-prerelease/, and IIRC the dlang.org repo already
downloads the last official release and installs it in phobos/. So it's
just a matter of extending this to install multiple doc builds in
phobos-x.y.z/.


T

-- 
This sentence is false.
May 08 2016
parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 5/9/16 1:33 AM, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:

 AFAICT, it shouldn't be super hard to do this. We're already building
 Phobos docs in phobos-prerelease/, and IIRC the dlang.org repo already
 downloads the last official release and installs it in phobos/. So it's
 just a matter of extending this to install multiple doc builds in
 phobos-x.y.z/.


That is correct. -- Andrei
May 09 2016
prev sibling parent reply Peter =?UTF-8?B?SMOkZ2dtYW4=?= <hagg.pet2 online.fi> writes:
On Sunday, 8 May 2016 at 17:19:05 UTC, qznc wrote:

 On Sunday, 8 May 2016 at 06:05:36 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 http://blog.tenstral.net/2016/05/adventures-in-d-programming.html


 Thanks, I missed that post until now.


 "the documentation not matching the actual code is a bad 
 experience for someone new to the language"

 I would interpret that as a sign that we want multiple versions 
 of documentation available on the website. For example, Python 
 does that.


You've quoted the wrong part of the paragraph. The real problem 
he encountered was not the doc, it was the phobos bugs in the 
older version shipped with GDC/LDC:

"For GDC, which I used to compile my code due to LDC having bugs 
at that time, this means that it is shipping with a very outdated 
copy of Phobos"

The the doc thing is "just" a symptom. Older offline doc is 
always available in the release archive, it's easy to understand 
that so it's not the actual problem.
May 08 2016
next sibling parent reply qznc <qznc web.de> writes:
On Sunday, 8 May 2016 at 22:22:08 UTC, Peter Häggman wrote:

 On Sunday, 8 May 2016 at 17:19:05 UTC, qznc wrote:

 On Sunday, 8 May 2016 at 06:05:36 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 http://blog.tenstral.net/2016/05/adventures-in-d-programming.html


 Thanks, I missed that post until now.


 "the documentation not matching the actual code is a bad 
 experience for someone new to the language"

 I would interpret that as a sign that we want multiple 
 versions of documentation available on the website. For 
 example, Python does that.


 You've quoted the wrong part of the paragraph. The real problem 
 he encountered was not the doc, it was the phobos bugs in the 
 older version shipped with GDC/LDC:

 "For GDC, which I used to compile my code due to LDC having 
 bugs at that time, this means that it is shipping with a very 
 outdated copy of Phobos"

 The the doc thing is "just" a symptom. Older offline doc is 
 always available in the release archive, it's easy to 
 understand that so it's not the actual problem.


You are correct, but can this be solved? Newer Phobos versions 
fix bugs. GDC needs a newer Phobos? Well, this is translated into 
GDC needs more manpower. Everything does. Nothing new.
May 09 2016
parent reply Matthias Klumpp <matthias tenstral.net> writes:
On Monday, 9 May 2016 at 09:29:36 UTC, qznc wrote:

 On Sunday, 8 May 2016 at 22:22:08 UTC, Peter Häggman wrote:

 [...]

 You've quoted the wrong part of the paragraph. The real 
 problem he encountered was not the doc, it was the phobos bugs 
 in the older version shipped with GDC/LDC:

 "For GDC, which I used to compile my code due to LDC having 
 bugs at that time, this means that it is shipping with a very 
 outdated copy of Phobos"

 The the doc thing is "just" a symptom. Older offline doc is 
 always available in the release archive, it's easy to 
 understand that so it's not the actual problem.


 You are correct, but can this be solved? Newer Phobos versions 
 fix bugs. GDC needs a newer Phobos? Well, this is translated 
 into GDC needs more manpower. Everything does. Nothing new.


First of all, that blogpost generated way more buzz than I 
expected - looks like D is highly interesting to people, which is 
great news :-)

To elaborate a bit more on the version incompatibilities thing: 
E.g. me as a new user reads about std.concurrency.Generator, 
wants to use it, and it turns out that the standard library 
doesn't contain it yet (in GDC). Same for std.experimental.logger.
Okay, means I can't use these.
Then, I wanted to use std.getopt - turns out the semantics have 
changed and new stuff has been added there too, which I can't 
use. Meh, if the docs would have at least told me that.

Then, I want to use D-YAML, which depends on std.stream. But 
std.stream is completely deprecated, with no clear path for me to 
see to replace it. That's really bad, and it also means I can't 
compile my code with making the use of deprecated stuff fail the 
compilation.

That was by far the most frustrating things I experienced in D. 
So ideally the docs would be split for different Phobos versions, 
that would already be a great help. Then, when deprecating stuff, 
showing a thing that replaces it or the proper way to write code 
using it would also be really nice.
E.g. wile I welcome the deprecation of std.net.curl in principle 
(having to link against an external library in the standard lib 
is odd), announcing to drop it before any replacement which 
offers feature-parity is written is bad (sidenote: IMHO the 
advanced net stuff shouldn't be in the standard library, because 
it's harder to update in case of security updates and bad crypto).

It would actually be really awesome if Phobos wasn't tied to a 
compiler, and all D compilers which are standard-compliant could 
compile it. Then, one could assume that people have the most 
recent Phobos. But it looks like it will take a longer time to 
get there, if at all.


Another thing that I didn't mention in the blogpost, but which 
might be interesting is that D - unlike Rust and Go - doesn't 
have a way that lets developers do a shallow-dive into the 
language by giving practical examples.
For example, Go has the really awesome Go Tour[1] which lets you 
explore and learn the basic concepts of the language by example.
For me, going through the tour was enough to actually start 
writing Go code, and while it certainly isn't complete, it is a 
nice way to show off the language and give people a taste of how 
it looks like. Rust has something similar with its tutorial[2].

For D, I haven't found an "in a nutshell" tutorial, and needed to 
read a bit more documentation and employ my existing C/C++ 
knowledge in some cases.
Having something like the Go tour for D would IMHO be an wesome 
way to attract people to try D.

Cheers,
     Matthias


[1]: https://tour.golang.org/welcome/1
[2]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/guessing-game.html
May 12 2016
next sibling parent ag0aep6g <anonymous example.com> writes:
On 05/12/2016 11:08 PM, Matthias Klumpp wrote:

 Then, I want to use D-YAML, which depends on std.stream. But std.stream
 is completely deprecated, with no clear path for me to see to replace
 it. That's really bad, and it also means I can't compile my code with
 making the use of deprecated stuff fail the compilation.


Deprecations are warnings by default. Using deprecated stuff shouldn't 
fail compilation unless you're using `-de` (dmd flag).


 E.g. wile I welcome the deprecation of std.net.curl in principle (having
 to link against an external library in the standard lib is odd),
 announcing to drop it before any replacement which offers feature-parity
 is written is bad


I don't think that has been announced. It's only been discussed, no?


 For D, I haven't found an "in a nutshell" tutorial, and needed to read a
 bit more documentation and employ my existing C/C++ knowledge in some
 cases.
 Having something like the Go tour for D would IMHO be an wesome way to
 attract people to try D.


That's being worken on: http://tour.dlang.io/
May 12 2016
prev sibling next sibling parent Daniel Kozak via Digitalmars-d-announce writes:
Dne 12.5.2016 v 23:08 Matthias Klumpp via Digitalmars-d-announce napsal(a):


 First of all, that blogpost generated way more buzz than I expected - 
 looks like D is highly interesting to people, which is great news :-)

 To elaborate a bit more on the version incompatibilities thing: E.g. 
 me as a new user reads about std.concurrency.Generator, wants to use 
 it, and it turns out that the standard library doesn't contain it yet 
 (in GDC). Same for std.experimental.logger.
 Okay, means I can't use these.


This is something I do not like. It would be awesome if I could use new 
version of phobos (dub package for eg.) in a dmd, ldc or gdc. Having 
language which is so unstable so is almost impossible to use standard 
library with older frontend is really anoying.


 Then, I wanted to use std.getopt - turns out the semantics have 
 changed and new stuff has been added there too, which I can't use. 
 Meh, if the docs would have at least told me that.


I knew it :). I end up with same problem with std.getopt. It was a 
reason for this post: 
http://forum.dlang.org/post/srhttrxrqawhspibdlrj forum.dlang.org

std.getopt has been backward compatible but it was not forward 
compatible. So because there is only latest docs available you are 
doomed :(.

 Then, I want to use D-YAML, which depends on std.stream. But 
 std.stream is completely deprecated, with no clear path for me to see 
 to replace it. That's really bad, and it also means I can't compile my 
 code with making the use of deprecated stuff fail the compilation.


I am not sure what exactly this deprecation message say, but you 
definitely should not used std.stream at all in a first place ;-).


 That was by far the most frustrating things I experienced in D. So 
 ideally the docs would be split for different Phobos versions, that 
 would already be a great help. 


Yes this would help a lot.

 Then, when deprecating stuff, showing a thing that replaces it or the 
 proper way to write code using it would also be really nice.
 E.g. wile I welcome the deprecation of std.net.curl in principle 
 (having to link against an external library in the standard lib is 
 odd), announcing to drop it before any replacement which offers 
 feature-parity is written is bad (sidenote: IMHO the advanced net 
 stuff shouldn't be in the standard library, because it's harder to 
 update in case of security updates and bad crypto).

 It would actually be really awesome if Phobos wasn't tied to a 
 compiler, and all D compilers which are standard-compliant could 
 compile it. Then, one could assume that people have the most recent 
 Phobos. But it looks like it will take a longer time to get there, if 
 at all.


I hope it would not take so much time. This is really important if D 
want to succeed.


 Another thing that I didn't mention in the blogpost, but which might 
 be interesting is that D - unlike Rust and Go - doesn't have a way 
 that lets developers do a shallow-dive into the language by giving 
 practical examples.
 For example, Go has the really awesome Go Tour[1] which lets you 
 explore and learn the basic concepts of the language by example.
 For me, going through the tour was enough to actually start writing Go 
 code, and while it certainly isn't complete, it is a nice way to show 
 off the language and give people a taste of how it looks like. Rust 
 has something similar with its tutorial[2]. For D, I haven't found an 
 "in a nutshell" tutorial, and needed to read a bit more documentation 
 and employ my existing C/C++ knowledge in some cases.
 Having something like the Go tour for D would IMHO be an wesome way to 
 attract people to try D.


There is already http://tour.dlang.io, but I do not have yet time to try 
it so I can't speak about maturity and so on. Other problem is with 
complexity of D. I believe even I can write book about D, which make 
people able to write almost anything in D. But they will not be able to 
read all D code. Go is OTOH really easy language so you need book with 
around 200 pages to explain everything. But with D I am not sure that 
even 1000 of pages would be enough :(.

 Cheers,
     Matthias


 [1]: https://tour.golang.org/welcome/1
 [2]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/guessing-game.html
May 12 2016
prev sibling parent Laeeth Isharc <spamnolaeeth nospamlaeeth.com> writes:
On Thursday, 12 May 2016 at 21:08:58 UTC, Matthias Klumpp wrote:

 To elaborate a bit more on the version incompatibilities thing: 
 E.g. me as a new user reads about std.concurrency.Generator, 
 wants to use it, and it turns out that the standard library 
 doesn't contain it yet (in GDC). Same for 
 std.experimental.logger.
 Okay, means I can't use these.


I haven't tried myself for these, but it might turn out to be not 
so much work just to copy the relevant files over and clean up 
the rough edges if you want to use these in GDC/LDC.  But I know 
that it's harder and a nuisance if you aren't that familiar with 
the language and just want to get your job done.


 Then, I want to use D-YAML, which depends on std.stream. But 
 std.stream is completely deprecated, with no clear path for me 
 to see to replace it. That's really bad, and it also means I 
 can't compile my code with making the use of deprecated stuff 
 fail the compilation.


https://github.com/DigitalMars/undeaD/blob/master/src/undead/stream.d

You might want to submit a pull request so D-YAML depends on this 
(where removed parts of Phobos go to live) rather than std.stream.


 That was by far the most frustrating things I experienced in D. 
 So ideally the docs would be split for different Phobos 
 versions, that would already be a great help. Then, when 
 deprecating stuff, showing a thing that replaces it or the 
 proper way to write code using it would also be really nice.


I agree.


 It would actually be really awesome if Phobos wasn't tied to a 
 compiler, and all D compilers which are standard-compliant 
 could compile it. Then, one could assume that people have the 
 most recent Phobos. But it looks like it will take a longer 
 time to get there, if at all.


A matter of maturity and resources.  It's quite astonishing the 
value that the small number of people working on LDC and GDC have 
been able to create.  (DMD too, but there are more people).  
Maybe there ought to be a way to express concrete appreciation 
for their work.
May 13 2016
prev sibling parent reply David Nadlinger <code klickverbot.at> writes:
On Sunday, 8 May 2016 at 22:22:08 UTC, Peter Häggman wrote:

 "[…] due to LDC having bugs at that time […]"


Are there any bug reports for this, by the way? Thanks!

  — David
May 12 2016
parent Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:
On Thursday, 12 May 2016 at 22:01:04 UTC, David Nadlinger wrote:

 Are there any bug reports for this, by the way? Thanks!


I believe, it was the atomicOp bug. You can see the link to 
discussion there.
May 13 2016