Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:35:20 -0800, Ali Çehreli wrote: > I did need to change my text only a few times, e.g. when constant-sized > arrays became value types.
You can easily check from the changelogs what happened between dmd 1.00 and 1.056. Quite a lot changed. You could even write a 200 page book about the changes. > D is great because it is being designed openly by great programmers: the > person with the longest C++ compiler writing experience, the person who > has pushed C++ templates beyond their limits and introduced needs for > stronger templates, many others who contribute to the language at > various levels. Heck, even my naive voice has an effect on the language. Heh, whatever. But the problem is, when I write a book about C, C++, Java, or some other language, I do know how it behaves. I can write informal programming books for novices or exact academic text with full description of the grammar rules, type system, and e.g. denotational or operational semantics. A D book is like a c++0x, Java7 or Haskell 2010 book - you constantly need to update it to reflect the changes in the next spec update. Now with D this isn't the case. I have to participate in the spec writing process no matter what I do. I do know how lazily Walter responds to queries and I do know that even though many have complained about semantics of the protection attributes in class inheritance several times during the past 10 years, nothing has changed. I don't want to write books that say 1. Classes ---------- 1.1. Inheritance ---------------- Classes in D can inherit from a base class. [snip] The syntax below shows how to do this: class {classname} : {protection-attr} {baseclassname} { } {classname} == name of the new class, represents the type name {baseclassname} == name of the base class {protection-attr} == perhaps one of these {public|protected|package| private} - I have no effing clue what this does and neither does anyone else but isn't this a cool feature that somehow proves that D is very practical language and also implementing your own compiler is so damn easy