On Fri, 20 Nov 2015 14:41:04 +0000, Chris wrote: > Yep, what can one say. > > 1. Who goes to the language reference, when they want to _learn_ a > language?
It's the obvious place if you're familiar with other programming languages. Tutorials tend to be geared toward people who have little to no programming experience, who view learning a new language (even in a paradigm they're used to) as a large thing. We were all there once, but we're not all there now. When I learn a new language, I want typically 20-30 lines of example code and a language reference. I can start writing code after reading a short example, and I can use the language reference to fill in the remaining gaps. The language reference is usually both denser and better categorized for my needs. > 2. If you really want to learn a language, you will learn it. There are > enough resources for D now, there's room for improvement, but there > always is. I was choosing between programming languages a while ago, most of which I hadn't used before. For each of them, it wasn't the case that I wanted to learn them, but I knew I probably wanted to use one of them. If any of them were as obtuse to learn as D, I would have skipped past them post haste. If I'm evaluating a programming language to start using at work, I will evaluate it on how easy it is for me to accomplish things in that language and how easy it will be for my coworkers to start using the language. My coworkers mostly know Ruby and are just tentatively switching to Java. Moving to Haskell probably isn't an option despite the existence of decent tutorials, but D is similar enough that they could learn -- assuming there are good tutorials readily available. > I know, catering for the "one second attention span" crowd is a recipe > for success, if you deal with PHP or JS. But D is not in that league. > Even if you cater for them, they will soon be frustrated anyway, because > for D you'll need a deeper understanding of things, sooner or later. You were contemptuous toward PHP and JavaScript, and now you are being contemptuous toward people who are potentially interested in learning D. Please be more respectful.
