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digitalmars.D.learn - Would you recommend TDPL today?

reply matheus <matheus gmail.com> writes:
Hi, I'm mostly a lurker in these Forums but sometimes I post here 
and there, my first language was C and I still use today together 
with my own library (A Helper) which is like a poor version of 
STB (https://github.com/nothings/stb).

I usually use D language sometimes as C on steroids, using AA and 
GC and some other features, but I never entered in this realm 
very deeply.

I always wanted to dive in and I always postponed, but I decided 
to go a littler deeper, and I thought about going with The D 
Programming Language, but as I see it is from 2010, and I wonder 
if is it a good resource to go currently?

I don't care about the age of the book, since I learned C in late 
90's with Kernighan and Ritchie "The C Programming Language", but 
at time C was "stable", now I think D maybe has evolved much more 
in these 14 years, so I'm a bit on the fence.

Any thoughts or recommendations?

Thanks,

Matheus.
Jan 15
next sibling parent reply Jonathan M Davis <newsgroup.d jmdavisprog.com> writes:
On Monday, January 15, 2024 7:25:32 PM MST matheus via Digitalmars-d-learn 
wrote:

 Hi, I'm mostly a lurker in these Forums but sometimes I post here
 and there, my first language was C and I still use today together
 with my own library (A Helper) which is like a poor version of
 STB (https://github.com/nothings/stb).

 I usually use D language sometimes as C on steroids, using AA and
 GC and some other features, but I never entered in this realm
 very deeply.

 I always wanted to dive in and I always postponed, but I decided
 to go a littler deeper, and I thought about going with The D
 Programming Language, but as I see it is from 2010, and I wonder
 if is it a good resource to go currently?

 I don't care about the age of the book, since I learned C in late
 90's with Kernighan and Ritchie "The C Programming Language", but
 at time C was "stable", now I think D maybe has evolved much more
 in these 14 years, so I'm a bit on the fence.

 Any thoughts or recommendations?

 Thanks,

 Matheus.



From what I recall, it's mostly still correct, but there are things in there


that have since changed or which were never implemented (e.g. synchronized
classes never became a thing; synchronized functions still exist, but TDPL
talks about them being replaced with synchronized classes and that never
happened - and likely will never happen). There's also an errata for it, but
AFAIK, that just fixes some mistakes it; it doesn't update it. This wiki
entry tries to list some of the differences, but I expect that it also is
rather out-of-date at this point:

https://wiki.dlang.org/Differences_With_TDPL

So, TDPL is a good resource, but you have to take into account the fact that
some of the details are wrong, which you may not want to do. In that
respect, Ali's book would likely work better:

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

It was written more recently, and I'm pretty sure that Ali has updated it on
some basis. I fully expect that there are things that you'd get out of TDPL
that you wouldn't get from Ali's book, so there's definitely something to
said for reading both, but again, whether that makes sense largely depends
on whether you want to deal with figuring out which parts of TDPL are still
valid.

- Jonathan M Davis
Jan 15
parent Mike Shah <mshah.475 gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 16 January 2024 at 02:58:03 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
wrote:

 On Monday, January 15, 2024 7:25:32 PM MST matheus via 
 Digitalmars-d-learn wrote:

 [...]



[...]


 that have since changed or which were never implemented (e.g. 
 synchronized classes never became a thing; synchronized 
 functions still exist, but TDPL talks about them being replaced 
 with synchronized classes and that never happened - and likely 
 will never happen). There's also an errata for it, but AFAIK, 
 that just fixes some mistakes it; it doesn't update it. This 
 wiki entry tries to list some of the differences, but I expect 
 that it also is rather out-of-date at this point:

 https://wiki.dlang.org/Differences_With_TDPL

 So, TDPL is a good resource, but you have to take into account 
 the fact that some of the details are wrong, which you may not 
 want to do. In that respect, Ali's book would likely work 
 better:

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

 It was written more recently, and I'm pretty sure that Ali has 
 updated it on some basis. I fully expect that there are things 
 that you'd get out of TDPL that you wouldn't get from Ali's 
 book, so there's definitely something to said for reading both, 
 but again, whether that makes sense largely depends on whether 
 you want to deal with figuring out which parts of TDPL are 
 still valid.

 - Jonathan M Davis


I'll also add that Adam's Book (D Cookbook) and Mike Parkers Book 
(Learning D) are both excellent. Mike's is mostly up to date, 
minus I think the post-blit function calls. Adam's has lots of 
various samples (may be good to read alongside, or otherwise 
after Ali or Mike's book once you have a feel for the language).
Jan 15
prev sibling next sibling parent matheus <matheus gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 16 January 2024 at 02:25:32 UTC, matheus wrote:

 ...


I'll reply to myself but I just would like to say thanks to 
Jonathan M Davis and Mike Shah.

I started with TDPL but I'll fill my knowledge with the other 
suggestions you gave me.

Thanks again,

Matheus.
Jan 16
prev sibling parent Paolo Invernizzi <paolo.invernizzi gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 16 January 2024 at 02:25:32 UTC, matheus wrote:

 Hi, I'm mostly a lurker in these Forums but sometimes I post 
 here and there, my first language was C and I still use today 
 together with my own library (A Helper) which is like a poor 
 version of STB (https://github.com/nothings/stb).

 [...]


I suggest also Ali book, Programming in D, is excellent [1]

[1] http://ddili.org/ders/d.en/index.html
Jan 17