Reddit reviews The D Programming Language

My sister's. I kid you not. Fragment of the large painting is featured on a book of mine.

> Alexandrescu didn't create the D language...

I don't think that's what the original commenter (or perhaps the source they were quoting) was saying. Rather, they were saying that Alexandrescu was the author of the book the The D Programming Language.

Really happy to see interest in D. I think it's an excellent programming language to start with, and there's a few more resources than you might think.

Great introduction to programming in general
http://ddili.org/ders/d.en/index.html

A more advanced overview of D
http://www.amazon.com/D-Programming-Language-Andrei-Alexandrescu/dp/0321635361

Make sure to check out Rosetta Code for tons examples:
http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:D

Web programming is a good way to start out
http://vibed.org/

For an example web project, used in production:
https://github.com/rejectedsoftware/vibenews

Most of these links can of course be found at:
http://wiki.dlang.org/Books

Make sure you check out the new API documentation:
http://dlang.org/library/index.html

And don't miss out on all of the great projects in D:
http://wiki.dlang.org/Open_Source_Projects
http://code.dlang.org/

If you have any questions, you can always post on the forums, but I've found that an even better way to get feedback is through the #D channel on irc.freenode.net.

Feel free to message me directly with questions too! I'm relatively new to the language myself, but I have a solid background in other languages and I'm transitioning to D as my go-to language.

> Definitely want to try using it once Alexandrescu's book comes out and 2.0 becomes stable.

There's Andrei Alexandrescu's book, The Day Programming Language, which has been well received. Andrei is one of the language designers and joined Walter Bright pretty early in the process of designing D2, the current version of D.

I haven't read it (I prefer online documentation and forums), and I'm unfamiliar with the book you mentioned (I'm mostly familiar with K&R's C).

Anyway, hope this helps!

I found The D Programming Language to be very enjoyable, and it is basically the D bible right now.

The main D website is now dlang.org. Most (all?) of the links on the sidebar are up-to-date in my experience. Check out the Articles section of the sidebar especially. The library reference is autogenerated from the release source code, so it's up-to-date.

If you want help from actual people, there is a lot of action on D.learn on forum.dlang.org.

There's also /r/d_language. It doesn't seem as active as the D forums, but the D creators and many of the principle developers are redditors.

And of course, you can filter on D at Stack Overflow. Again, I've seen D developers on there answering questions, so don't be afraid to ask questions.

Andrei's book on D: "The D Programming Language" would be another great read whether you are looking into the D language or not, it is a great read for general programming design IMHO :-)

Hai!

Andrei's book is just great, covering language design considerations as well:

http://www.amazon.com/D-Programming-Language-Andrei-Alexandrescu/dp/0321635361

Also, I don't know about good :) but I am translating my Turkish book on D into English, which is geared towards the novice programmer:

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

D is starting to become more popular. It's graced the frontpage of /r/programming a bit recently. One recommended resource is the book written by one of the language's developers: The D Programming Language.

> As for D, it does not even exist in real world.

It does. It just needs some good tools support.

For reference Python first appeared in 1991, but didn't really gain wide acceptance until well after 2000. Ruby first appeared in 1995, but didn't gain wide acceptance until RoR was open sourced in 2004.

D was first designed in 1999. It's starting to gain more and more acceptance -- Andrei Alexandrescu is writing a book on it. This is about the time languages really start gaining traction. We'll see what happens in the next few years.

Umm, I think Python is a good language to start with. It's forgiving and low on boilerplate code. I haven't read it but Learn Python the Hard Way by Zed Shaw is supposed to be decent (and it's free online). I didn't like Learning Python published by O'Reilly. I'd just read reviews on Amazon if Learn Python the Hard Way isn't working for you. Whichever you end up with, I recommend typing all examples from the book into the computer by hand. Something about doing this really helps make things stick in your head. You'll also make the occasional typo and have to debug your program which is something we programmers spend more time doing than any of us care to admit.

I think it is important to try to think of something you want to make and have it in mind while you are learning the language. It can be any software but I recommend a video game. They are really good for this because you can just think up a simple concept or implement your own version of an existing game. Having a goal makes it so you are constantly solving the problems you will encounter while trying to reach that goal which is the most important part of programming (more so than learning the syntax of the language). This is actually the highest rated Python book on Amazon and is all about gamedev with Python.

After you've learned Python to the point where you are comfortable (no need to master it), learn other languages to grow as a programmer. Once you've gotten a couple languages under your belt it's actually really easy to learn even more languages (unless it's a very odd language like Haskell, Lisp, or Brainfuck). The problem solving skills you've acquired often work in any language and you learn some new techniques as you learn new languages.

• Accelerated C++ is the go-to these days for C++.
  
• The C Programming Language is often recommended for learning C but it's pricey and there are dozens of good books on C to choose from.
  
• Head First Java gets recommended a lot for learning Java.
  
• C# In Depth is very highly rated and happens to be written by the guy with the largest score on StackOverflow (a kind of Q&A for programmers).
  
• The D Programming Language I really enjoyed.
  
• Programming Ruby 1.9 is often recommended but it felt more like a reference manual to me. There are higher rated books on Amazon.
  
  

Do you know any other languages? I'm familiar mainly with C and C++ and after looking at some D it doesn't seem too far off....

Anyways, this book will serve you well
The D Programming Language

or try this:
http://www.learn-programming.za.net/programming_d_01_getting_started.html

If anyone else comes in here, what are your views on D? is it worth learning? I just don't see how it's that much different from C and C++.

Non-affiliate link to book.

edit: I regret that this comment lead to an off-topic sprawl.

lazyness?

If you already have a basic idea of how the machine works, I really have to recommend D as a powerful and, above all, sensible high-level language that isn't bound to a single platform the way C# is. You can do (almost) everything you can in C++, and more (the almost is multiple inheritance and binding to C++ libraries, but there are ways around both). If you're curious, check out Andrei's book or ask for more info in our IRC channel (irc://irc.freenode.net/#d).

If you are interested in C++ but afraid of it, consider the D language. Unfortunately it arrived too late so it's not well-known.