On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 6:45 AM, Joel C. Salomon <joelcsalo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I'm a C programmer with some C++ experience ("C with Classes"+STL
> anyway; never did implement anything but the most trivial templates) and
> I'm looking to get stated with D. I figured a good way to do that would
> be to implement a template library, and it may as well be something I'll
> actually use. Here's what I'm thinking I could make:
>
> • a library for dimensional analysis, like boost::units, and/orI always found this kind of thing boring, also I see it as kind of useless overhead that I don't want in my calculations. But it could be a nice way to get your feet wet. > • a set of classes for 2-dimensional Geometric Algebra (scalars, > vectors, and pseudoscalars/imaginary numbers). This would be very interesting. The topic of GA did come up a few weeks ago here. From what I understand about GA, it's elegant from the math point of view, but in terms of writing efficient code it doesn't fare so well. D can do a lot of stuff with ease at compile-time that C++ couldn't even dream of, so it would be a great showcase for D if someone could figure out how to make a GA lib that rivals the performance of a classic mats & vecs approach. I don't really know if it is possible. Maybe the cost of the GA abstractions cannot be automatically eliminated like that. But if not it would be interesting to know why. > Should I start with D1 for now, or jump right in to D2? D1 will give you the opportunity to build on more existing libraries. D2 will give you the opportunity to use fancy new features that aren't available in D1. D2 will also likely break your code at some point as the D2 language evolves. D1 will not (should not anyway). --bb
