On 09/10/2011 11:00, Zardoz wrote:
Recently I've been asked if I could give a speech about D in my university. It will be of one hour of long. I not respond yet, but I think that I will do it. Actually I have the problem that I don't know well how explain well too many features and things of D that I like. I think that only talking about D's arrays and type system I will need around half-hour. Any recommendation of how I should focus it ?
My best advise would be to assume everyone is closed-minded, has a favorite language, and has no intention to switch away from it or try anything different. Don't try and sell D to them, just tell them about it - trying to tell them/imply D is better will cause them to dislike it for no real reason. If you can get some audience participation in there then you can judge how they're reacting to it and adjust as necessary.
As for content, assuming everyone has a decent general knowledge of programming in general, I'd talk about cool stuff that D can do that other languages can do but in more difficult ways. Talk about things that can go well beyond the scope of your talk so people can go away and try it after if they like. I advise you refer to some of Andrei's talks for ideas, you can generally see how well things work/don't work based on questions from the audience/Andrei's responses. I forget the topic, but there's definitely been a couple of occasions where Andrei didn't have a decent response (free copies of TDPL were given out as a result ;)).
-- Robert http://octarineparrot.com/
