On Tuesday, 15 October 2013 at 18:36:19 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
On Tuesday, 15 October 2013 at 18:32:59 UTC, Craig Dillabaugh
wrote:
On Tuesday, 15 October 2013 at 18:25:48 UTC, Dejan Lekic wrote:
On Tue, 15 Oct 2013 20:13:45 +0200, ProgrammingGhost wrote:
What is the fastest way for me to learn D? I think what I
want is a
syntax reference manual and a good tutorial to learn how to
find and use
libs.
I learned D by doing two things.
1) Downloading the bundled DMD in a ZIP file.
2) Reading the language reference at http://www.dlang.org
(back then it
was on DigitalMars website...)
That is all you really need.
Now I would suggest reading the D Wiki as well. ;)
You really learned D from the online language reference?
Thats hard core! You must be much smarter than me.
I suggested reading the Phobos docs online, but I was just
joking.
I did too. I don't see it as particularly
hard/only-for-smart-people, I just built simple programs and
slowly looked up what I needed as I went along. A lot of help
from people here and on IRC helped as well of course.
So did I, and then just at the right moment, TDPL was published,
which explains the concepts of D and the reasoning behind them
rather nicely, but it is not a "cookbook" or an elaborate "how
to" guide. Ali's tutorial is much more practical as regards code
examples, pointing out possible pitfalls and the like. As usual,
you will need more than one book/source. Mind you, D is
constantly evolving and things keep changing, so it's a good idea
to stay on this forum and check the API regularly. If you do
this, you will not only learn D, but also get a deeper
understanding of programming related problems (and possible
solutions) in general.
I don't know if there is a general overview of how D does things
differently, e.g. that a lot of search, iteration and comparison
algorithms are handled in std.algorithm (e.g. startsWith(), which
would be in a string handling module in other languages).
Anyway, go ahead, you can only win!
