On 20/12/2014 10:34 a.m., Laeeth Isharc wrote:
On Friday, 19 December 2014 at 00:21:06 UTC, H. S. Teoh via
Digitalmars-d wrote:
On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 08:12:07PM +0000, Laeeth Isharc via
Digitalmars-d wrote:
[...]
- better reference documentation. I don't believe I lack the ability
generally to figure things out, but the dlang.org library reference
is far from being utterly clear if you don't start from a place of
understanding the language and its concepts. once you get the spirit
of it, it all makes sense, but modern people don't tend to be
distinguished by their grit and many will give up first.
Please file documentation enhancement bugs in bugzilla. I do try to
work on improving documentation when I have the time, but if nobody
points out a possible improvement, I might never think of it (or it
might take a long time before I notice it, esp. if I rarely use that
module!). I'm sure others who browse bugzilla from time to time will
also appreciate having documentation bugs to work on -- since they're
generally the lowest-hanging fruit that even most newbies should be
able to contribute to.
I will register an account now, and try to make a start in the coming
months.
- better worked examples. python is outstanding for this. you can
figure out how to do anything by looking at someone else's example.
of course there isn't presently the support for this, and I recognize
that one attracts a different kind of person when it becomes easy to
learn a language. but such is the price of maturity.
Please file doc enhancement requests for these too. :-) A lot of
Phobos documentation is unfortunately quite lacking in good examples.
I've done a few of them, but generally, having a bugzilla issue for it
is much better, because I may already know function X like the back of
my hand and so never notice that the examples aren't that good,
whereas if a newbie pointed out that the examples for X are unclear,
then I'd know there's an issue and look into how to explain X better.
Will start keeping track and try to write some points up when I have a
few of them. It's often just the absence of anything more than a few
lines. Now I have spent some time with D, it becomes easier - and one
can just go read the source. But some people will be put off by that.
There is a benefit from having a toll to enter too, but probably in the
long run D's destiny cannot be to remain a tool solely for those with
good taste, courage, and perseverance ;)
One should be patient with oneself about where one starts from, and it
may well be that this is the least of anyone's concerns for the time
being, but it might be something to work towards, step by step, over time.
Some simple examples for python:
http://python.readthedocs.org/en/latest/howto/urllib2.html
https://wiki.python.org/moin/HowTo/Sorting
[compare the above with the rather terse docs on std.algorithm, which
are the only ones that come up that I can see when doing a search on
dlang.org for sorting]
If D wants to be purely a systems language then people who can't figure
it out for themselves should stick with something better suited to them
- we all have limitations. But I think what D intrinsically wants to be
(just as an acorn wants to be an oak) is rather broader in scope, and if
true that may mean the ecosystem needs to grow in a different way to
permit that.
I met the global head of derivatives research for a big investment bank
in London for a coffee the other day. He knew of D and a bit about it.
Right now they use mostly python. He is interested, but he has a lot on
his plate and not enough people. Beyond wanting more along the lines of
the links above, it would be nice to be able to point him to a few
tutorials that show here is how you use D to do certain basic business
processes. Like grabbing data from Fed web site, parsing, storing in
HDF5 etc. And in other fields it must be similar. You want to be able
to tell your guy - here kid, you're a smart kid and our processes are
too slow - go and take a look at this D thing and see if we can do
something with it. That's easier with more fleshed out use cases
(Adam's stuff comes to mind).
I am musing aloud more than suggesting anything specific. I will try to
start contributing a bit, although limited by time and frankly
experience of D.
Laeeth
Aka we need use cases and tutorials on the main site. Already been
suggested. Really we need to get our act together and make it happen.
