On Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:00:59 -0400, Andrei Alexandrescu
<[email protected]> wrote:
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/975ng/diving_into_the_d_programming_language_tdpl/
(Don't tell anyone, but I plan to rewrite it.)
Andrei
Wow, my head's spinning :)
That's a lot of data/concepts in one chapter. Have you considered how
this chapter will be for a newbie programmer? Not a programmer that comes
from C or Java or Python or whatever, but someone who's starting with a
blank slate? I noticed you gloss over a lot of details. For example:
"The operators and their precedence are much like the ones you'd find in
D's sibling languages: '+', '-', '*', '/', and '%' for basic arithmetic,
'==', '!=', '<', '>', '<=', '>=' for comparisons, fun(argument1,
argument2) for function calls, and so on."
A new-to-programming person is going to be baffled by some of that, such
as % for basic arithmethic, and == and != for comparisons.
I understand this is an overview, but you may want to mention that the
chapter is assuming you know a programming language already (preferrably a
C-like one). Or am I misunderstanding the target audience? I'd say
chapter 1 should be simple enough to be understood by everyone, not just
experienced programmers. It's a good overview of the language, but reads
much more like a comparison with C++. It's more like a review article
than an introduction to a new language. I'd call this chapter a preface
and indicate its target audience, so newbies can skip right to the
learning part of the book.
I'm viewing this book as an equivalent to "the C programming Language" by
K&R. In chapter 1, they gloss over some of the details, but not nearly as
many as you have, and the advanced concepts are to a minimum. And there
is not a significant time spent explaining how it relates to predecessor
languages.
*disclaimer: I'm not an expert on teaching or writing books.
Just my 2 cents.
-Steve
