On Saturday, 5 October 2013 at 02:42:54 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
On Friday, October 04, 2013 16:12:14 Craig Dillabaugh wrote:
I guess the more fundamental question is, what is the purpose
of
the documentation? Is it a quick reference for D users, or is
it
a resource for people trying to learn the language? I learned
C++ using Qt, largely from their online docs. The Qt
documentation is a reference, but it also tends to provide lots
of explanation.
It would never have occurred to me that API documentation would
be use for
teaching the language - even documentation for the standard
library. I would
expect people to learn the language first. Yes, the standard
library
documentation needs to be reasonably accessible to newbies, but
I would not
expect it to be used as a teaching tool for the language. The
documentation on
a type or function is there to teach you about how to use that
particular type
or function, not how to use the language.
Of course, I'm also the sort of person who thinks that people
are nuts to just
jump into a game without reading the entire manual first.
- Jonathan M Davis
Yes, but the manual (Andrei's book?) barely touches on the
standard library (ranges are not even covered). Things are
getting better now that Ali's book is getting closer to having a
complete English translation. For whatever reason, when I first
started trying to use Phobos, I found that the knowledge I had
gathered from Andrei's book still left me dazed and confused at
times.
Cheers,
Craig
