On Thursday, 16 October 2014 at 22:26:51 UTC, RBfromME wrote:
I'm a newbie to programming and have been looking into the D
lang as a general purposing language to learn, yet the D
overview indicates that java would be a better language to
learn for your first programming language. Why? Looks like D
is easier than Java...
Honestly, I'd recommend starting with VB.net or C# (preferably
C#) over D, as:
1) They're simpler, no template magic, not as low level, etc.
2) Having an excellent IDE is very nice for starting out, seeing
errors right as you type them, seeing all the methods and how to
call them, having the documentation right there in your IDE, and
not having to worry about whether what you just wrote is
something that the IDE's parser can't handle or is actually
invalid code.
3) Being significantly more popular is in general a boon, more
tutorials are available (though D has some nice resources like
Ali's book), and you're more likely to find a solution to a
problem through Google as more people have come across it.
4) Having to deal with any compiler bugs would be very
frustrating when starting to learn programming. D still has
plenty, even if they're much less noticeable now. Trying to
figure out why something doesn't work only to realize it's a
compiler bug is frustrating.
5) Having a drag-and-drop GUI designer is very nice. D is still
difficult to use for GUIs, and when starting it's really nice to
see something significant on the screen right away.
6) You probably won't use most of D's features when you're just
learning, so much of D's advantages are gone.
D is an awesome language, but I would not recommend it for
someone completely new to programming. Once you get the hang of
programming, D is an excellent language, until then something
simpler, more popular, and more supported, would be better.
