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digitalmars.D.announce - I've started blog a little more about D.

reply "Gary Willoughby" <dev nomad.so> writes:
I'm starting to blog a little more and in particular i've started 
writing more about D. I'm using it a great deal at work now and 
all new stuff is to be written in it. I'm loving every minute of 
this and really want to sing its praises.

I'll not lie though, i still need to learn a great deal to be at 
the level of the engineers here but my sights are fully fixed on 
D and learning every aspect of it. I've already made a small 
contribution to druntime and i hope to do more.

I've finally got my head around templates and i've really started 
to understand their power and flexibility so i thought i would 
write an article as a one stop shop for other developers who need 
to understand this stuff as quickly as possible. I'd like for 
your verification that i have my facts straight and if not i'll 
amend the text asap.

Be gentle: http://nomad.so/2013/07/templates-in-d-explained/
Jul 20 2013
next sibling parent reply "Peter Alexander" <peter.alexander.au gmail.com> writes:
Content looks great, but I was continually distracted by the 
consistent use of lowercase i as a pronoun. Please fix this. It 
would be a real shame for such a long and otherwise excellent 
article to be rendered amateurish by such a trivial error.

Just in case English isn't your first language: the pronoun "I" 
is always uppercase, including when used with contractions, e.g. 
I'm, I've, I'll etc.
Jul 21 2013
parent reply "Gary Willoughby" <dev nomad.so> writes:
On Sunday, 21 July 2013 at 11:31:09 UTC, Peter Alexander wrote:

 Content looks great, but I was continually distracted by the 
 consistent use of lowercase i as a pronoun. Please fix this. It 
 would be a real shame for such a long and otherwise excellent 
 article to be rendered amateurish by such a trivial error.

 Just in case English isn't your first language: the pronoun "I" 
 is always uppercase, including when used with contractions, 
 e.g. I'm, I've, I'll etc.


Thanks for the kind words about the article.

He he, this is a bit of concious rebellion on my part. English is 
my first language but i don't agree that 'i' should be 
capitalized mid-sentence. I am too humble to consider a 
mid-sentence 'i'  important enough.

Interesting article regarding 'i':
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03wwln-guestsafire-t.html
Jul 21 2013
parent reply "Peter Lundgren" <peter peterlundgren.com> writes:
On Sunday, 21 July 2013 at 13:47:06 UTC, Gary Willoughby wrote:

 On Sunday, 21 July 2013 at 11:31:09 UTC, Peter Alexander wrote:

 Content looks great, but I was continually distracted by the 
 consistent use of lowercase i as a pronoun. Please fix this. 
 It would be a real shame for such a long and otherwise 
 excellent article to be rendered amateurish by such a trivial 
 error.

 Just in case English isn't your first language: the pronoun 
 "I" is always uppercase, including when used with 
 contractions, e.g. I'm, I've, I'll etc.


 Thanks for the kind words about the article.

 He he, this is a bit of concious rebellion on my part. English 
 is my first language but i don't agree that 'i' should be 
 capitalized mid-sentence. I am too humble to consider a 
 mid-sentence 'i'  important enough.

 Interesting article regarding 'i':
 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03wwln-guestsafire-t.html


It doesn't matter why. That's how it's done in English. You don't 
get to change the capitalization of keywords in D. Same thing 
here.
Jul 21 2013
parent reply "Gary Willoughby" <dev nomad.so> writes:
On Sunday, 21 July 2013 at 14:18:50 UTC, Peter Lundgren wrote:

 It doesn't matter why. That's how it's done in English. You 
 don't get to change the capitalization of keywords in D. Same 
 thing here.


Computer languages are wholly different from *fluid* spoken and 
written languages. See en_US vs en_GB. Like i said i'm rebelling 
against the uppercase 'i' and i have for years.

Please don't let this degenerate into a grammar nazi poasting 
session, please focus on the article content instead.
Jul 21 2013
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 7/21/2013 8:43 AM, Gary Willoughby wrote:

 Please don't let this degenerate into a grammar nazi poasting session, please
 focus on the article content instead.


Well, if you do want to be a rebel on capitalization, you have to accept that 
your audience may get distracted from your message and just see the rebellion
:-)
Jul 21 2013
next sibling parent reply Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Sunday, July 21, 2013 12:40:17 Walter Bright wrote:

 On 7/21/2013 8:43 AM, Gary Willoughby wrote:

 Please don't let this degenerate into a grammar nazi poasting session,
 please focus on the article content instead.


 
 Well, if you do want to be a rebel on capitalization, you have to accept
 that your audience may get distracted from your message and just see the
 rebellion :-)


Or worse, just think that you have a lower intelligence level than you 
actually have.

- Jonathan M Davis
Jul 21 2013
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 7/21/2013 2:21 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 Or worse, just think that you have a lower intelligence level than you
 actually have.


I read code, articles, books, etc., all day. There's a million times more 
content than I could hope to read. So I (and everyone else) needs some sort of 
filtering mechanism.

A common filter is layout, spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, etc. 
The more problems there are with that, the more the reader is apt to conclude 
"this is not worth my time to read" and skip it. Disorganized, sloppy 
presentation is strongly correlated with disorganized, sloppy thoughts, and who 
wants to spend time reading it?

Presentation is incredibly important.

Successful authors like Andrei and Scott Meyers spend a great deal of effort 
worrying about fonts, colors, margins, etc. (a lot more than I do, which is one 
reason why they are better writers than I). These things matter. I bought a 
scifi ebook from Amazon a few months ago, and there was a misspelling on every 
single page. Every one would drop me out of the "zone" in being absorbed in the 
story, like hitting a pothole on the highway. I didn't buy the sequel because
it 
was so irritating and because I figured the author didn't care about his
readers 
(there were many Amazon reviews about these misspellings, and he still wasn't 
motivated to fix it).

My brother is in the tech recruiting business. He sees thousands of resumes a 
week. I asked him once how long he looked at a resume before giving it a thumbs 
up or [delete]. He said 2 to 3 seconds. Anything with sloppy formatting, 
misspellings, etc., goes directly to the trash. It's just not worth his time,
as 
there are plenty more resumes where the author did care enough to get it right.


The same, of course, applies to code. If the code is formatted badly, or looks 
sloppy in any way, the odds go up dramatically that it is full of bugs. We all 
know this, why shouldn't it apply to writing?

And, of course, you can make a style out of lowercase and no punctuation, like 
ee cummings. There are always counterexamples! In a sense all of us here are
Jul 21 2013
parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 7/21/13 3:38 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 7/21/2013 2:21 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 Or worse, just think that you have a lower intelligence level than you
 actually have.


 I read code, articles, books, etc., all day. There's a million times
 more content than I could hope to read. So I (and everyone else) needs
 some sort of filtering mechanism.

 A common filter is layout, spelling, grammar, punctuation,
 capitalization, etc. The more problems there are with that, the more the
 reader is apt to conclude "this is not worth my time to read" and skip
 it. Disorganized, sloppy presentation is strongly correlated with
 disorganized, sloppy thoughts, and who wants to spend time reading it?

 Presentation is incredibly important.


Regarding that, this is one awesomely funny flamewar:

http://booksandpals.blogspot.com/2011/03/greek-seaman-jacqueline-howett.html

The flamewar became epic enough to get its own place on Wikipedia: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greek_Seaman


Andrei
Jul 21 2013
prev sibling parent Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich gmail.com> writes:
On 7/21/13, Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com> wrote:

 Or worse, just think that you have a lower intelligence level than you
 actually have.


It looks like everyone enjoys being an asshole on the internet these
days. Instead of focusing on content these people start min-wars about
capitalization. Give it a rest.
Jul 21 2013
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Vladimir Panteleev" <vladimir thecybershadow.net> writes:
On Saturday, 20 July 2013 at 21:19:03 UTC, Gary Willoughby wrote:

 I'm starting to blog a little more and in particular i've 
 started writing more about D.


Cool! Would you mind adding a D tag to the related articles, so I 
could add it to Planet D ( http://planet.dsource.org/ ) ?
Jul 21 2013
parent reply "Gary Willoughby" <dev nomad.so> writes:
On Sunday, 21 July 2013 at 17:05:23 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:

 Cool! Would you mind adding a D tag to the related articles, so 
 I could add it to Planet D ( http://planet.dsource.org/ ) ?


http://nomad.so/tag/d/
Jul 21 2013
parent "Vladimir Panteleev" <vladimir thecybershadow.net> writes:
On Sunday, 21 July 2013 at 17:54:12 UTC, Gary Willoughby wrote:

 On Sunday, 21 July 2013 at 17:05:23 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev 
 wrote:

 Cool! Would you mind adding a D tag to the related articles, 
 so I could add it to Planet D ( http://planet.dsource.org/ ) ?


 http://nomad.so/tag/d/


Added, thanks! (Sorry if the tag was there already, I didn't see 
it in the category list and didn't realize there was a separate 
tag list.)
Jul 21 2013
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 7/20/2013 2:19 PM, Gary Willoughby wrote:

 I'm starting to blog a little more and in particular i've started writing more
 about D. I'm using it a great deal at work now and all new stuff is to be
 written in it. I'm loving every minute of this and really want to sing its
praises.

 I'll not lie though, i still need to learn a great deal to be at the level of
 the engineers here but my sights are fully fixed on D and learning every aspect
 of it. I've already made a small contribution to druntime and i hope to do
more.

 I've finally got my head around templates and i've really started to understand
 their power and flexibility so i thought i would write an article as a one stop
 shop for other developers who need to understand this stuff as quickly as
 possible. I'd like for your verification that i have my facts straight and if
 not i'll amend the text asap.

 Be gentle: http://nomad.so/2013/07/templates-in-d-explained/


It's a nice blog! Thanks for doing this.

A stylistic issue:

"These are useful if you want to pass an arbitrary amount of types or values to 
any kind of template."

It sounds better as:

"These are useful for passing an arbitrary amount of types or values to any
kind 
of template."

I've found in practice that nearly all uses of the word "you" in technical 
writing are superfluous and it flows better if they are removed.
Jul 21 2013
next sibling parent reply "Tobias Pankrath" <tobias pankrath.net> writes:
Stopped reading after two sentences because it is grey font on 
grey background.
Jul 21 2013
parent reply "renoX" <renozyx gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 21 July 2013 at 20:25:38 UTC, Tobias Pankrath wrote:

 Stopped reading after two sentences because it is grey font on 
 grey background.


+1
Please fix the colours: I don't care whether you use I or i, 
anyway I can't read what you wrote..
Sure I could copy/paste the text, mess with the CSS, but no: if 
you truly want readers fix your blog colours.

Thanks,
renoX
Jul 22 2013
parent reply "Gary Willoughby" <dev nomad.so> writes:
On Monday, 22 July 2013 at 12:39:28 UTC, renoX wrote:

 On Sunday, 21 July 2013 at 20:25:38 UTC, Tobias Pankrath wrote:

 Stopped reading after two sentences because it is grey font on 
 grey background.


 +1
 Please fix the colours: I don't care whether you use I or i, 
 anyway I can't read what you wrote..
 Sure I could copy/paste the text, mess with the CSS, but no: if 
 you truly want readers fix your blog colours.

 Thanks,
 renoX


Thanks, i've increased the contrast a bit, it maybe was a 'bit' 
too grey!
Jul 22 2013
parent reply "Kirill" <bribeme gmail.com> writes:
the colors still through me off. with orange and shades of grey 
for the text and the background.

i liked the article.


On Monday, 22 July 2013 at 19:07:50 UTC, Gary Willoughby wrote:

 On Monday, 22 July 2013 at 12:39:28 UTC, renoX wrote:

 On Sunday, 21 July 2013 at 20:25:38 UTC, Tobias Pankrath wrote:

 Stopped reading after two sentences because it is grey font 
 on grey background.


 +1
 Please fix the colours: I don't care whether you use I or i, 
 anyway I can't read what you wrote..
 Sure I could copy/paste the text, mess with the CSS, but no: 
 if you truly want readers fix your blog colours.

 Thanks,
 renoX


 Thanks, i've increased the contrast a bit, it maybe was a 'bit' 
 too grey!
Jul 24 2013
parent reply "Kirill" <bribeme gmail.com> writes:
I think bright orange on the webpage distracts from the low 
contrast main text.


On Wednesday, 24 July 2013 at 17:23:49 UTC, Kirill wrote:

 the colors still through me off. with orange and shades of grey 
 for the text and the background.

 i liked the article.


 On Monday, 22 July 2013 at 19:07:50 UTC, Gary Willoughby wrote:

 On Monday, 22 July 2013 at 12:39:28 UTC, renoX wrote:

 On Sunday, 21 July 2013 at 20:25:38 UTC, Tobias Pankrath 
 wrote:

 Stopped reading after two sentences because it is grey font 
 on grey background.


 +1
 Please fix the colours: I don't care whether you use I or i, 
 anyway I can't read what you wrote..
 Sure I could copy/paste the text, mess with the CSS, but no: 
 if you truly want readers fix your blog colours.

 Thanks,
 renoX


 Thanks, i've increased the contrast a bit, it maybe was a 
 'bit' too grey!
Jul 24 2013
parent "Gary Willoughby" <dev nomad.so> writes:
On Wednesday, 24 July 2013 at 17:27:46 UTC, Kirill wrote:

 I think bright orange on the webpage distracts from the low 
 contrast main text.


That's the intended design. Also, the contrast passes online all 
contrast tests i've tried, so i will leave it as it is.
Jul 24 2013
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Gary Willoughby" <dev nomad.so> writes:
On Sunday, 21 July 2013 at 19:45:07 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 It's a nice blog! Thanks for doing this.

 A stylistic issue:

 "These are useful if you want to pass an arbitrary amount of 
 types or values to any kind of template."

 It sounds better as:

 "These are useful for passing an arbitrary amount of types or 
 values to any kind of template."

 I've found in practice that nearly all uses of the word "you" 
 in technical writing are superfluous and it flows better if 
 they are removed.


Thanks, updated.
Jul 21 2013
parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 7/21/2013 2:17 PM, Gary Willoughby wrote:

 Thanks, updated.


Welcs. With my own writing, I'll often write it all out, then grep for "you"
and 
fix them all :-)
Jul 21 2013
prev sibling parent reply "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 21 July 2013 at 19:45:07 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 I've found in practice that nearly all uses of the word "you" 
 in technical writing are superfluous and it flows better if 
 they are removed.


This is why I prefer to use 'thou' when writing documentation. :-P
Jul 21 2013
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 7/21/2013 3:24 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 This is why I prefer to use 'thou' when writing documentation. :-P


I use "thou" when I'm issuing commandments to my subjects.
Jul 21 2013
parent Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com> writes:
On Sun, 21 Jul 2013 15:39:47 -0700
Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote:


 On 7/21/2013 3:24 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 This is why I prefer to use 'thou' when writing documentation. :-P


 
 I use "thou" when I'm issuing commandments to my subjects.


Thou shalt not obey this commandment.
Jul 27 2013
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 7/20/2013 2:19 PM, Gary Willoughby wrote:

 Be gentle: http://nomad.so/2013/07/templates-in-d-explained/


http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1irdjn/how_to_use_templates_in_d/
Jul 21 2013
parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 7/21/13 7:18 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 7/20/2013 2:19 PM, Gary Willoughby wrote:

 Be gentle: http://nomad.so/2013/07/templates-in-d-explained/


 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1irdjn/how_to_use_templates_in_d/


Publishing to reddit should be preferably done on weekdays in the morning.

Andrei
Jul 21 2013
prev sibling next sibling parent "Anthony Goins" <neontotem gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 20 July 2013 at 21:19:03 UTC, Gary Willoughby wrote:

 I'm starting to blog a little more and in particular i've 
 started writing more about D. I'm using it a great deal at work 
 now and all new stuff is to be written in it. I'm loving every 
 minute of this and really want to sing its praises.

 I'll not lie though, i still need to learn a great deal to be 
 at the level of the engineers here but my sights are fully 
 fixed on D and learning every aspect of it. I've already made a 
 small contribution to druntime and i hope to do more.

 I've finally got my head around templates and i've really 
 started to understand their power and flexibility so i thought 
 i would write an article as a one stop shop for other 
 developers who need to understand this stuff as quickly as 
 possible. I'd like for your verification that i have my facts 
 straight and if not i'll amend the text asap.

 Be gentle: http://nomad.so/2013/07/templates-in-d-explained/


Very nice thanks a heap.

Do not mind the Nay Sayers!  When a man needs to rebel he needs 
to rebel.
(But I must confess I'm a little spooked, thinking of Ayn Rand's 
Anthem.)
Jul 21 2013
prev sibling parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 7/20/13 2:19 PM, Gary Willoughby wrote:

 I'm starting to blog a little more and in particular i've started
 writing more about D. I'm using it a great deal at work now and all new
 stuff is to be written in it. I'm loving every minute of this and really
 want to sing its praises.


Great work! If your employer is not listed at 
http://wiki.dlang.org/Current_D_Use, could you please add it?

Thanks,

Andrei
Jul 21 2013