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digitalmars.D.announce - New blog about D

reply =?UTF-8?B?TcOhcmNpbw==?= Martins <marcioapm gmail.com> writes:
Today I launched a very tiny and humble blog, with the first post 
being about D. It's likely all posts will be about D in the end...

You can reach it http://www.mmartins.me

I want to get better at writing, as I have barely ever written 
anything other than code, and my name... I noticed there aren't 
many people actively blogging about D, so I will give it a go, 
and in the process, try to grow the community a tiny bit by 
showcasing D's strengths as I remember discovering them myself 
over the course of last year writing exclusively D.

The first post is about vector swizzling. Game programmers get 
spoiled by writing shaders where swizzling is extremely 
convenient, and then when they go back to writing C++ they have 
wet dreams about swizzing in there too. It's not a dream in D. 
This was the first use-case I thought of when I first learned 
about D's templates and mixins, but never got to implement it 
until now.

The blog platform itself is home-made and the server-side is 100% 
D (vibe.d). Once I build it up a bit more, I will probably put it 
up on github as an example of how easy it is to build 
high-performance frontend and backend web apps with D + vibe.d. 
It is really productive once the scaffolding and pipeline is all 
built.

If you have a read, please let me know where I could improve, 
both my writing and the D code!

Cheers!
-M
Sep 27 2015
next sibling parent reply Andy Smith <andyrsmith googlemail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 27 September 2015 at 23:23:05 UTC, Márcio Martins 
wrote:

 Today I launched a very tiny and humble blog, with the first 
 post being about D. It's likely all posts will be about D in 
 the end...

 You can reach it http://www.mmartins.me

 I want to get better at writing, as I have barely ever written 
 anything other than code, and my name... I noticed there aren't 
 many people actively blogging about D, so I will give it a go, 
 and in the process, try to grow the community a tiny bit by 
 showcasing D's strengths as I remember discovering them myself 
 over the course of last year writing exclusively D.

 The first post is about vector swizzling. Game programmers get 
 spoiled by writing shaders where swizzling is extremely 
 convenient, and then when they go back to writing C++ they have 
 wet dreams about swizzing in there too. It's not a dream in D. 
 This was the first use-case I thought of when I first learned 
 about D's templates and mixins, but never got to implement it 
 until now.

 The blog platform itself is home-made and the server-side is 
 100% D (vibe.d). Once I build it up a bit more, I will probably 
 put it up on github as an example of how easy it is to build 
 high-performance frontend and backend web apps with D + vibe.d. 
 It is really productive once the scaffolding and pipeline is 
 all built.

 If you have a read, please let me know where I could improve, 
 both my writing and the D code!

 Cheers!
 -M


Great post! Really like it. If you're genuinely soliciting 
constructive feedback my one suggestion would be to maybe change 
the blog name to something a bit less quirky. To be honest I was 
50/50 whether I'd read the post when I saw the title. Glad I read 
the post in the end, but I suspect many may be put off by it....

Cheers,

A.
Sep 27 2015
parent Meta <jared771 gmail.com> writes:
I didn't even notice the blog name at first; I don't think it 
makes that much of a difference, and it wouldn't put me off 
reading articles from the blog. Usually blog posts are linked to 
directly from sites like Hackernews and Reddit anyway. As for the 
post itself, I enjoyed it. Vector swizzling is probably THE first 
thing someone thinks of when first introduced to opDispatch.
Sep 27 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent Pankaj <me.pankaj786 gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 27 September 2015 at 23:23:05 UTC, Márcio Martins 
wrote:

 Today I launched a very tiny and humble blog, with the first 
 post being about D. It's likely all posts will be about D in 
 the end...

 [...]


I like your blog.

I'm a newbie to D (or to Programming you can say) and need 
resources for learning D.

I like people who take time out of their busy schedule for 
writing to help others.

Thanks again.
-ps2931
Sep 27 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 9/27/2015 4:23 PM, Márcio Martins wrote:

 Today I launched a very tiny and humble blog, with the first post being about
D.
 It's likely all posts will be about D in the end...


https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3mnhp4/vector_swizzle_in_d/

You might want to do an "I am the author, AMA!" post there.
Sep 27 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent Edwin van Leeuwen <edder tkwsping.nl> writes:
On Sunday, 27 September 2015 at 23:23:05 UTC, Márcio Martins 
wrote:

 The blog platform itself is home-made and the server-side is 
 100% D (vibe.d). Once I build it up a bit more, I will probably 
 put it up on github as an example of how easy it is to build 
 high-performance frontend and backend web apps with D + vibe.d. 
 It is really productive once the scaffolding and pipeline is 
 all built.


Is there an rss feed to the blog? That way I can follow it :)
Sep 28 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent reply John Colvin <john.loughran.colvin gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 27 September 2015 at 23:23:05 UTC, Márcio Martins 
wrote:

 Today I launched a very tiny and humble blog, with the first 
 post being about D. It's likely all posts will be about D in 
 the end...

 [...]


this is what http://code.dlang.org/packages/gl3n does, right?
Sep 28 2015
parent =?UTF-8?B?TcOhcmNpbw==?= Martins <marcioapm gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 09:49:03 UTC, John Colvin wrote:

 On Sunday, 27 September 2015 at 23:23:05 UTC, Márcio Martins 
 wrote:

 Today I launched a very tiny and humble blog, with the first 
 post being about D. It's likely all posts will be about D in 
 the end...

 [...]


 this is what http://code.dlang.org/packages/gl3n does, right?


Same result, but different implementation. My approach is generic 
in the dimensions and coordinate names. I did not implement it 
but you could also specify coordinate name aliases, so a vector 
could get xyzw or rgba, qrst, or what-have you.

The static if approach is not as generic, but probably will 
compile faster, as it doesn't require string mixins.
Sep 28 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Sunday, 27 September 2015 at 23:23:05 UTC, Márcio Martins 
wrote:

 Today I launched a very tiny and humble blog, with the first 
 post being about D. It's likely all posts will be about D in 
 the end...

 You can reach it http://www.mmartins.me

 I want to get better at writing, as I have barely ever written 
 anything other than code, and my name... I noticed there aren't 
 many people actively blogging about D, so I will give it a go, 
 and in the process, try to grow the community a tiny bit by 
 showcasing D's strengths as I remember discovering them myself 
 over the course of last year writing exclusively D.

 The first post is about vector swizzling. Game programmers get 
 spoiled by writing shaders where swizzling is extremely 
 convenient, and then when they go back to writing C++ they have 
 wet dreams about swizzing in there too. It's not a dream in D. 
 This was the first use-case I thought of when I first learned 
 about D's templates and mixins, but never got to implement it 
 until now.

 The blog platform itself is home-made and the server-side is 
 100% D (vibe.d). Once I build it up a bit more, I will probably 
 put it up on github as an example of how easy it is to build 
 high-performance frontend and backend web apps with D + vibe.d. 
 It is really productive once the scaffolding and pipeline is 
 all built.

 If you have a read, please let me know where I could improve, 
 both my writing and the D code!

 Cheers!
 -M


Hi, I've just read the post. It's nice, it doesn't waste the 
reader's time and comes straight to the point (apart from 
highlighting D's strength). I agree, however, that the title 
could have been better in terms of attracting readers. Since you 
mention game programming, maybe it would be good to mention it 
somehow in the title, something to this effect:

"A common problem in game programming and how D solved it"

or something like that.

In this way someone who's interested in game programming may read 
it or at least take note of the fact that D is mentioned in the 
context of game programming (and offers solutions).  You would 
want to think less like an engineer when writing and more like an 
editor / PR guy who wants to get readers interested. Good 
headlines are the most difficult part.
Sep 28 2015
next sibling parent =?UTF-8?B?TcOhcmNpbw==?= Martins <marcioapm gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 10:02:20 UTC, Chris wrote:


 "A common problem in game programming and how D solved it"


That indeed sounds more appealing for a general audience.

Thanks Chris!
Sep 28 2015
prev sibling parent reply Mike Parker <aldacron gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 10:02:20 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Hi, I've just read the post. It's nice, it doesn't waste the 
 reader's time and comes straight to the point (apart from 
 highlighting D's strength). I agree, however, that the title 
 could have been better in terms of attracting readers. Since 
 you mention game programming, maybe it would be good to mention 
 it somehow in the title, something to this effect:

 "A common problem in game programming and how D solved it"

 or something like that.

 In this way someone who's interested in game programming may 
 read it or at least take note of the fact that D is mentioned 
 in the context of game programming (and offers solutions).  You 
 would want to think less like an engineer when writing and more 
 like an editor / PR guy who wants to get readers interested. 
 Good headlines are the most difficult part.


I think it's a perfect title. "vector swizzling" is a common term 
for anyone working with the graphics side of games and is also 
applicable outside of games development for any graphics 
programming. Good keyword title.
Sep 28 2015
parent reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 13:20:54 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 10:02:20 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Hi, I've just read the post. It's nice, it doesn't waste the 
 reader's time and comes straight to the point (apart from 
 highlighting D's strength). I agree, however, that the title 
 could have been better in terms of attracting readers. Since 
 you mention game programming, maybe it would be good to 
 mention it somehow in the title, something to this effect:

 "A common problem in game programming and how D solved it"

 or something like that.

 In this way someone who's interested in game programming may 
 read it or at least take note of the fact that D is mentioned 
 in the context of game programming (and offers solutions).  
 You would want to think less like an engineer when writing and 
 more like an editor / PR guy who wants to get readers 
 interested. Good headlines are the most difficult part.


 I think it's a perfect title. "vector swizzling" is a common 
 term for anyone working with the graphics side of games and is 
 also applicable outside of games development for any graphics 
 programming. Good keyword title.


"Vector swizzling" should definitely be mentioned in the keywords 
or a in a sub heading. But IMO "game development" should be in 
the headline, or "graphics programming", although I think "game 
development" would attract a wider audience than "graphics 
programming".

It's best to keep it as general as possible (within reason). 
There is the temptation to think like an engineer and be very 
specific, but this will only attract a small audience, i.e. those 
that look for "vector swizzling". IMO, it makes more sense to 
have the article come up, when somebody types "game development 
vectors" or "game development dlang". And don't forget that a 
good title catches the reader's attention when s/he just skims 
through a homepage / search results, regardless of whether or not 
s/he's looking for "vector swizzling".
Sep 28 2015
parent reply Mike Parker <aldacron gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 14:26:35 UTC, Chris wrote:

 It's best to keep it as general as possible (within reason). 
 There is the temptation to think like an engineer and be very 
 specific, but this will only attract a small audience, i.e. 
 those that look for "vector swizzling". IMO, it makes more 
 sense to have the article come up, when somebody types "game 
 development vectors" or "game development dlang". And don't 
 forget that a good title catches the reader's attention when 
 s/he just skims through a homepage / search results, regardless 
 of whether or not s/he's looking for "vector swizzling".


I really don't like blog posts that have overly broad titles when 
the subject matter is technical. I think the title should be as 
specific as possible so that I know if it's something I care 
about. If I see a general title about game development that 
refers to something that only touches a specific aspect of it, 
one that I'm not interested in, I'll just feel like I've wasted 
my time. Moreover, when I am doing a search for something 
specific, the blog title is often all I pay attention to as I can 
the search results. A more specific title helps out a lot.
Sep 28 2015
parent reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 04:19:58 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 14:26:35 UTC, Chris wrote:



 I really don't like blog posts that have overly broad titles 
 when the subject matter is technical. I think the title should 
 be as specific as possible so that I know if it's something I 
 care about. If I see a general title about game development 
 that refers to something that only touches a specific aspect of 
 it, one that I'm not interested in, I'll just feel like I've 
 wasted my time. Moreover, when I am doing a search for 
 something specific, the blog title is often all I pay attention 
 to as I can the search results. A more specific title helps out 
 a lot.


It depends on what the blogger in question wants. If s/he wants 
to draw attention to D in general and give examples of how D is 
useful to solve certain problems (e.g. with templates, mixins 
etc), then the title should be more general. The next article 
might be about processing big data in D - then it should have 
"big data" in the title/tag/keywords and not just something that 
refers to one specific aspect of big data handling. The point is 
that if people see D being associated with various aspects of 
programming (games, big data), it gets them interested in D in 
general.

If, however, the blogger only wants to talk about D to people who 
already use D, then s/he might as well be more specific.
Sep 29 2015
parent =?UTF-8?B?TcOhcmNpbw==?= Martins <marcioapm gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 10:23:25 UTC, Chris wrote:

 On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 04:19:58 UTC, Mike Parker 
 wrote:

 On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 14:26:35 UTC, Chris wrote:



 I really don't like blog posts that have overly broad titles 
 when the subject matter is technical. I think the title should 
 be as specific as possible so that I know if it's something I 
 care about. If I see a general title about game development 
 that refers to something that only touches a specific aspect 
 of it, one that I'm not interested in, I'll just feel like 
 I've wasted my time. Moreover, when I am doing a search for 
 something specific, the blog title is often all I pay 
 attention to as I can the search results. A more specific 
 title helps out a lot.


 It depends on what the blogger in question wants. If s/he wants 
 to draw attention to D in general and give examples of how D is 
 useful to solve certain problems (e.g. with templates, mixins 
 etc), then the title should be more general. The next article 
 might be about processing big data in D - then it should have 
 "big data" in the title/tag/keywords and not just something 
 that refers to one specific aspect of big data handling. The 
 point is that if people see D being associated with various 
 aspects of programming (games, big data), it gets them 
 interested in D in general.

 If, however, the blogger only wants to talk about D to people 
 who already use D, then s/he might as well be more specific.


I just published a follow up post, demonstrating how easy it is 
to get swizzle assignment.

I also implemented feeds, which can be found here:
Atom: http://www.mmartins.me/feed.xml?atom
RSS: http://www.mmartins.me/feed.xml?rss

Posts are now also properly tagged with meta keywords.

Chris, I kept the title similar to suggest a follow up. I still 
think you were right regarding the title policy, and next posts 
will have a title more appealing to a broader audience.

Thanks for the feedback guys!
Oct 02 2015
prev sibling parent reply Vladimir Panteleev <thecybershadow.lists gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 27 September 2015 at 23:23:05 UTC, Márcio Martins 
wrote:

 Today I launched a very tiny and humble blog, with the first 
 post being about D. It's likely all posts will be about D in 
 the end...

 You can reach it http://www.mmartins.me


Hi,

If you can create an RSS or ATOM feed for D posts, I can add your 
blog to Planet D:

http://planet.dsource.org/
Sep 28 2015
parent reply =?UTF-8?B?TcOhcmNpbw==?= Martins <marcioapm gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 11:53:28 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev 
wrote:

 On Sunday, 27 September 2015 at 23:23:05 UTC, Márcio Martins 
 wrote:

 Today I launched a very tiny and humble blog, with the first 
 post being about D. It's likely all posts will be about D in 
 the end...

 You can reach it http://www.mmartins.me


 Hi,

 If you can create an RSS or ATOM feed for D posts, I can add 
 your blog to Planet D:

 http://planet.dsource.org/


I haven't had time to implement feeds, yet. Will probably do it 
over of this week.
Sep 28 2015
parent reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 12:14:56 UTC, Márcio Martins 
wrote:

 On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 11:53:28 UTC, Vladimir 
 Panteleev wrote:

 On Sunday, 27 September 2015 at 23:23:05 UTC, Márcio Martins 
 wrote:

 Today I launched a very tiny and humble blog, with the first 
 post being about D. It's likely all posts will be about D in 
 the end...

 You can reach it http://www.mmartins.me


 Hi,

 If you can create an RSS or ATOM feed for D posts, I can add 
 your blog to Planet D:

 http://planet.dsource.org/


 I haven't had time to implement feeds, yet. Will probably do it 
 over of this week.


You're welcome :-) Is there a way you can incorporate keywords 
for search engines and some meta tags like

<meta content="D programming, game programming, vector 
swizzle"></meta>?
Sep 28 2015
parent =?UTF-8?B?TcOhcmNpbw==?= Martins <marcioapm gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 13:12:35 UTC, Chris wrote:

 On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 12:14:56 UTC, Márcio Martins 
 wrote:

 On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 11:53:28 UTC, Vladimir 
 Panteleev wrote:

 On Sunday, 27 September 2015 at 23:23:05 UTC, Márcio Martins 
 wrote:

 Today I launched a very tiny and humble blog, with the first 
 post being about D. It's likely all posts will be about D in 
 the end...

 You can reach it http://www.mmartins.me


 Hi,

 If you can create an RSS or ATOM feed for D posts, I can add 
 your blog to Planet D:

 http://planet.dsource.org/


 I haven't had time to implement feeds, yet. Will probably do 
 it over of this week.


 You're welcome :-) Is there a way you can incorporate keywords 
 for search engines and some meta tags like

 <meta content="D programming, game programming, vector 
 swizzle"></meta>?


I built the platform with support for a bunch of meta content, 
including keywords for the blog, and also per post, but I think I 
didn't set them up in the content, yet. Will look into that when 
I look into improving SEO. I will make sure I can also change the 
title and 301 redirect the current link to the new one :)

I have limited time to work on this, so I have to balance between 
improving the blog and writing new posts :)
Sep 28 2015