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digitalmars.D.learn - Some impressions/notes from a new D programmer

reply mark <mark qtrac.eu> writes:
I've been learning D for a few weeks now.

I'm an experienced programmer in other languages (esp. Python, 
but also Rust and C++).

Here're some *early* impressions and notes.

D Tour

I found the D Tour, esp. "D's Basics" to be very helpful. Each 
part is short and in most cases understandable. Being able to run 
and edit the code is a real help for learning.

D Playground

The D playground https://run.dlang.io/ is very useful for trying 
out snippets and generally learning, so I use it a lot. (I still 
haven't worked out how to save a URL to my code though.)

Library Reference Documentation

The Library Reference documentation seems to be a mixed bag. 
Often I've found a good overview at the start, but then few or no 
examples in the docs for classes and methods (see e.g., 
https://dlang.org/phobos/std_zip.html#.ZipArchive).

I don't find the presentation of the member properties and 
methods very easy to read, but the worst aspect is the lack of 
examples.

Standard Library

The library itself "feels" a bit incomplete, which is surprising 
given how long D's been around. To give just two examples:

The lack of set and B-tree types is disappointing (esp. 
considering that the much younger Rust has them). I'm using 
rbtree for sets but that imposes a requirement that my items 
support < (rather than the == or hash I'd expect for a set).

The fact that the return value of std.file.getAttributes() means 
completely different things on POSIX and Windows. That's fair 
enough, but there ought to be a platform-neutral equivalent for 
those writing cross-platform applications that returned, say, a 
struct or tuple with the common subset of attributes normalised. 
(And if there is such a function, why isn't it cross-referenced.) 
There seems to be a curious mixture of functions which are POSIX- 
or Windows-specific and those which are platform neutral.

The D Language

The D language seems to be a "kitchen sink" (i.e., has 
everything) like C++, Rust, (and nowadays, Python). This makes it 
big and a *lot* to learn. However, I managed to create a little 
library that used template types (with some help from this 
forum), and I _understand_ the templates. This is a huge 
improvement over C++ or Rust. And to my surprise, so far my D 
programs have about the same line counts as the Python versions.

Also, I've found building much easier than C++. However, dub 
doesn't seem to be competitive with Rust's cargo. Getting fast 
statically built (no dependency) executables is really nice.

GUI Programming

I've tried a number of D GUI libraries, and all bar one have been 
problematic.

To my surprise GtkD was easy to install on both Linux and Windows 
and getting "hello world" to build and run was fairly easy. The 
documentation doesn't seem that easy to use, but I'll start with 
Ron Tarrant's https://gtkdcoding.com/ and see how I get on from 
there.

D Books

I find Ali Çehreli's book (http://ddili.org/ders/d.en/index.html) 
more suited to complete beginners, but I am skim reading it and 
finding it useful here and there.

The main books I'm reading are Mike Parker's Learning D and Adam 
Ruppe's D Cookbook, both of which I think are pretty good. 
(However, I hope both will produce more up-to-date and improved 
second editions with a better publisher.)

Learn D Forum

People on this forum have always provided polite and helpful 
answers. This is a very important intangible benefit of the 
language.

Conclusion

My hope was that D would offer a sweet spot between Python's ease 
and speed of development and Rust's performance. And so far this 
looks like being the case.
Feb 12 2020
next sibling parent reply Dennis <dkorpel gmail.com> writes:
Thanks for your perspective. Just a few things are unclear to me:

On Wednesday, 12 February 2020 at 10:39:06 UTC, mark wrote:

 I don't find the presentation of the member properties and 
 methods very easy to read


Can you elaborate a bit on this?


 The lack of set and B-tree types is disappointing (esp. 
 considering that the much younger Rust has them). I'm using 
 rbtree for sets but that imposes a requirement that my items 
 support < (rather than the == or hash I'd expect for a set).


This confuses me. So there is std.container.rbtree, but you don't 
like that the element type needs to have an order defined? How 
can Rust do binary search in a tree that has no order?
If you are looking for a hashset, you can use an associative 
array for that.


 However, dub doesn't seem to be competitive with Rust's cargo. 
 Getting fast statically built (no dependency) executables is 
 really nice.


I've heard good things about cargo, but haven't used it myself 
yet.
Do you have a specific thing dub can improve the most on?
Feb 12 2020
parent reply mark <mark qtrac.eu> writes:
On Wednesday, 12 February 2020 at 11:46:02 UTC, Dennis wrote:

 Thanks for your perspective. Just a few things are unclear to 
 me:

 On Wednesday, 12 February 2020 at 10:39:06 UTC, mark wrote:

 I don't find the presentation of the member properties and 
 methods very easy to read


 Can you elaborate a bit on this?


Maybe I'm just used to the Python docs, but I find them a lot 
easier to read.


 The lack of set and B-tree types is disappointing (esp. 
 considering that the much younger Rust has them). I'm using 
 rbtree for sets but that imposes a requirement that my items 
 support < (rather than the == or hash I'd expect for a set).


 This confuses me. So there is std.container.rbtree, but you 
 don't like that the element type needs to have an order 
 defined? How can Rust do binary search in a tree that has no 
 order?
 If you are looking for a hashset, you can use an associative 
 array for that.


Naturally a tree needs <. But I want a set and since D doesn't 
have one I can either use an AA or an rbtree and I was advised 
that an rbtree is better for this purpose.


 However, dub doesn't seem to be competitive with Rust's cargo. 
 Getting fast statically built (no dependency) executables is 
 really nice.


 I've heard good things about cargo, but haven't used it myself 
 yet.
 Do you have a specific thing dub can improve the most on?


Some cargo packages are applications. If I do 'cargo install 
someapp' it will be installed in $HOME/.cargo/bin. So by simply 
adding that to my PATH, I can easily use all installed rust apps. 
But dub doesn't appear to have an equivalent of this.
Feb 12 2020
parent reply Anonymouse <zorael gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 12 February 2020 at 13:36:13 UTC, mark wrote:

 Some cargo packages are applications. If I do 'cargo install 
 someapp' it will be installed in $HOME/.cargo/bin. So by simply 
 adding that to my PATH, I can easily use all installed rust 
 apps. But dub doesn't appear to have an equivalent of this.


There is 'dub run someapp', which is good enough for some cases, 
like digger[1]. But no 'dub install someapp', no.

Maybe there are some hard design decisions again $HOME/.dub/bin, 
unsure. It might be difficult to globally pull off if programs 
expect the binary to be placed in the source tree (for resources).

[1]: https://github.com/CyberShadow/Digger
Feb 12 2020
parent user1234 <user1234 12.de> writes:
On Wednesday, 12 February 2020 at 15:28:57 UTC, Anonymouse wrote:

 Maybe there are some hard design decisions again 
 $HOME/.dub/bin, unsure. It might be difficult to globally pull 
 off if programs expect the binary to be placed in the source 
 tree (for resources).

 [1]: https://github.com/CyberShadow/Digger


It could just create some shortcuts in ~/bin. AFAIK this special 
folder got automatically added to the $PATH in RH and deb 
distributions. The less obvious solution is for Windows systems.
Feb 12 2020
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 12 February 2020 at 10:39:06 UTC, mark wrote:

 Library Reference Documentation


Have you seen my fork?

http://dpldocs.info/experimental-docs/std.zip.ZipArchive.html

for example


 The documentation doesn't seem that easy to use


I generated docs for this too

http://gtk-d.dpldocs.info/gtk.AboutDialog.AboutDialog.html

though since it is generated from C source ultimately the samples 
there are still C! But you can navigate members somewhat well.
Feb 12 2020
parent reply mark <mark qtrac.eu> writes:
On Wednesday, 12 February 2020 at 14:15:40 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe 
wrote:

 On Wednesday, 12 February 2020 at 10:39:06 UTC, mark wrote:

 Library Reference Documentation


 Have you seen my fork?

 http://dpldocs.info/experimental-docs/std.zip.ZipArchive.html


Yours is *much* clearer.

However, if you compare:
http://dpldocs.info/experimental-docs/std.zip.html vs
https://dlang.org/phobos/std_zip.html

Yours rolls the two examples into one and doesn't show the 
Standards or Usage sections. But the official page doesn't have 
the Bugs section.

I also think you split into more HTML files which I prefer.
OTOH yours doesn't have the search box. Given how new I am to D, 
I really need to be able to search.


 for example


 The documentation doesn't seem that easy to use


 I generated docs for this too

 http://gtk-d.dpldocs.info/gtk.AboutDialog.AboutDialog.html

 though since it is generated from C source ultimately the 
 samples there are still C! But you can navigate members 
 somewhat well.


I hadn't seen this and it does looks easier to navigate. I've 
bookmarked it. Thanks.
Feb 12 2020
next sibling parent reply Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 12 February 2020 at 15:52:35 UTC, mark wrote:

 Yours rolls the two examples into one and doesn't show the 
 Standards or Usage sections.


Weird, that's a legit bug in there. I'll fix them.


 I also think you split into more HTML files which I prefer.
 OTOH yours doesn't have the search box. Given how new I am to 
 D, I really need to be able to search.


The search is in the upper right.... unless you resize the 
window, then it disappears. lol another bug, how did I not notice 
that before?

well I'll fix those in a little bit.
Feb 12 2020
next sibling parent mark <mark qtrac.eu> writes:
On Wednesday, 12 February 2020 at 18:20:47 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe 
wrote:

 On Wednesday, 12 February 2020 at 15:52:35 UTC, mark wrote:

 Yours rolls the two examples into one and doesn't show the 
 Standards or Usage sections.


 Weird, that's a legit bug in there. I'll fix them.


 I also think you split into more HTML files which I prefer.
 OTOH yours doesn't have the search box. Given how new I am to 
 D, I really need to be able to search.


 The search is in the upper right.... unless you resize the 
 window, then it disappears. lol another bug, how did I not 
 notice that before?

 well I'll fix those in a little bit.


Please mention when you've fixed the search on this list since 
then I can switch to using your version of the docs.

In my browser I can only see your search box if I expand the 
window to full screen which is wider than I need (I have a 
1920x1200 monitor, so only have the browser window 1200x1100.)
Feb 12 2020
prev sibling parent Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 12 February 2020 at 18:20:47 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe 
wrote:

 Weird, that's a legit bug in there. I'll fix them.


ooooh it isn't a bug i just forgot to update the file! that 
version i had was over a year old. so that's fixed


 The search is in the upper right.... unless you resize the 
 window, then it disappears.


so what happened here is it wraps to the next line if the window 
is too small.

i fixed it basically, i don't love it (need to use flexbox 
instead of this old float crap, i wrote most this css years ago) 
but eh you should be able to see the search box consistently now 
at least.
Feb 12 2020
prev sibling parent reply Steven Schveighoffer <schveiguy gmail.com> writes:
On 2/12/20 10:52 AM, mark wrote:

 I also think you split into more HTML files which I prefer.


FYI, dlang.org has a secondary version of the docs which splits the 
documents up more:

https://dlang.org/library/index.html

I can't find a link to it directly from the main page though...

This version is based on ddox (http://code.dlang.org/packages/ddox)

-Steve
Feb 12 2020
parent Sebastiaan Koppe <mail skoppe.eu> writes:
On Wednesday, 12 February 2020 at 18:39:36 UTC, Steven 
Schveighoffer wrote:

 On 2/12/20 10:52 AM, mark wrote:

 I also think you split into more HTML files which I prefer.


 FYI, dlang.org has a secondary version of the docs which splits 
 the documents up more:

 https://dlang.org/library/index.html

 I can't find a link to it directly from the main page though...

 This version is based on ddox 
 (http://code.dlang.org/packages/ddox)

 -Steve


There is also devdocs.io

It has many languages and frameworks. The beauty is that it 
caches in local storage so searches are super fast and it is also 
available offline.

Their d version lags a tiny bit, but that is fine.
Feb 12 2020
prev sibling next sibling parent bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Wednesday, 12 February 2020 at 10:39:06 UTC, mark wrote:


 Library Reference Documentation

 The Library Reference documentation seems to be a mixed bag. 
 Often I've found a good overview at the start, but then few or 
 no examples in the docs for classes and methods (see e.g., 
 https://dlang.org/phobos/std_zip.html#.ZipArchive).

 I don't find the presentation of the member properties and 
 methods very easy to read, but the worst aspect is the lack of 
 examples.


It's a bug if something isn't properly documented, whatever the 
flaw may be. It's gotten a lot better in the time that I've been 
using D, but there are still a few rough spots.

My strategy has been to ask for an example in the forum. I then 
click "Improve this page" in the upper right corner and it's a 
simple process to create a PR with the example added. Most of the 
documentation PRs I've created have been merged within a fwe 
hours. If you don't want to do that, you can create an issue in 
Bugzilla, with a detailed explanation of what you were doing and 
what the documentation should show instead.

It would be nice for this to already be done, and while it's 
generally good by the standards of programming languages, there 
are still some weak spots. Anyone can help fix them. In some 
cases when I've reported missing documentation, there actually 
*was* documentation but it wasn't getting added to the website 
for some reason. Nobody will know until it's pointed out. And 
nobody's going to shout at you for filing too many documentation 
bugs or creating too many PRs to fix documentation bugs.
Feb 12 2020
prev sibling parent Jan =?UTF-8?B?SMO2bmln?= <hrominium gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 12 February 2020 at 10:39:06 UTC, mark wrote:

 I've been learning D for a few weeks now.

 ...


I made exactly the same experience in December.
Feb 12 2020