• Don Clugston <nospam nospam.com> Apr 15 2008
• Sean Kelly <sean invisibleduck.org> Apr 15 2008
• Jesse Phillips <jessekphillips gmail.com> Apr 15 2008

Don Clugston <nospam nospam.com> writes:

Edward Diener Wrote:

 Bill Baxter wrote:
 Edward Diener wrote:
 
 D has some really nice features but it really needs much better 
 language documentation to attract programmers, especially C++ 
 programmers. 


 Hah, I think the same thing every time I'm forced to try to use a boost 
 library.  :-)   Like just today when I had to go look at Boost::MPL to 
 see what it was all about.


 That is a little unfair as you are comparing documentation about a
 computer language library to documentation about a computer language
 itself. 


I think it's reasonable -- boost is increasingly looking like a standard
library for C++; it can be compared to D's library docs, at least.
Your point about D's docs is valid, though -- they could certainly be better.

 The book with the misleading title is about Tango, actually.


 OK. Hopefully it will about D enough for me to pick up the particulars
 better than I have been able to do from the specification.


My opinion (as the technical reviewer of the book) was that the template
section discussed things from a C++ mindset, which is probably helpful for a
C++ programmer; yet it gives less detail on the interesting unique-to-D stuff
which renders many C++ techniques obsolete.

The underlying "problem" is that about a year ago, Walter suddenly stuffed a
raft of enormously powerful features into the language in a very short space of
time. Suddenly we had tuples, string mixins, and CTFE, and D wasn't playing
catch-up with C++ any more. The showcase examples of template metaprogramming
became obsolete overnight. We still haven't worked out the idioms for how to
use it all; there are some fascinating synergies with existing features.

Which makes documentation, especially the most useful "how-to" kind quite
difficult to write at this stage. But I reckon a "metaprogramming tips and
tricks" Wiki page would be pretty useful.

-Don.

Sean Kelly <sean invisibleduck.org> writes:

== Quote from Don Clugston (nospam nospam.com)'s article
 Edward Diener Wrote:
 OK. Hopefully it will about D enough for me to pick up the particulars
 better than I have been able to do from the specification.





Yup.  That was a somewhat contentious decision on my part.  Since C++ is the
only other
language with templates I wanted to be sure the reader understood templates in
general
with the hope that it would provide a good base to build on.  As a result,
because of the
length limitation of the book, the chapter doesn't talk too much about some of
the newer
or more advanced features that D offers such as tuples.

Regarding "Tango with D" in general though... very little of the book is
Tango-specific.  We
made a deliberate effort to make the language our primary focus.


Sean

Jesse Phillips <jessekphillips gmail.com> writes:

On Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:37:41 +0000, Sean Kelly wrote:

 == Quote from Don Clugston (nospam nospam.com)'s article
 Edward Diener Wrote:
 OK. Hopefully it will about D enough for me to pick up the
 particulars better than I have been able to do from the
 specification.


 template section discussed things from a C++ mindset, which is probably


 interesting unique-to-D stuff which renders many C++ techniques
 obsolete.
 
 Yup.  That was a somewhat contentious decision on my part.  Since C++ is
 the only other language with templates I wanted to be sure the reader
 understood templates in general with the hope that it would provide a
 good base to build on.  As a result, because of the length limitation of
 the book, the chapter doesn't talk too much about some of the newer or
 more advanced features that D offers such as tuples.
 
 Regarding "Tango with D" in general though... very little of the book is
 Tango-specific.  We made a deliberate effort to make the language our
 primary focus.
 
 
 Sean


I would like to compliment that effort, as it is IMO that the book was 
very well section in terms of what is D and what is Tango. I also think 
the book was very well written by all authors. I hope a book that goes 
into more of the specialties and details of D can be written with this 
quality.