I've just finished the last version of the GUI for the DMD compiler, now it works on Linux too.

[Murilo via Digitalmars-d-announce]

I've just finished the last version of the GUI for the DMD 
compiler, now it works on Linux too. It's perfect.

https://github.com/MuriloMir/DMD-GUI

Re: Is D programming friendly for beginners?

[bachmeier via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Tuesday, 12 March 2024 at 19:07:25 UTC, M.M. wrote:

I was always wondering about this debate on a suitable "first" 
programming language in a CS curriculum. I largely observe one 
dividing point: to start with a strongly-typed language or not. 
(After that, it probably does not matter so much which language 
is chosen; alas, it should be available on Windows, Linux, and 
Mac OS). Do you observe similar sentiment in the discussions in 
the university settings?


I'm not a CS person so I'll have to defer to others (their needs 
are very different). My grad students are doing more complicated 
programming for data analysis and simulation. I focus on 
recursion and using a functional programming approach, because 
that simplifies things so much for these types of problems. All I 
need is a language that supports that.

Re: Is D programming friendly for beginners?

[Martin Tschierschke via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Monday, 4 March 2024 at 13:37:53 UTC, Fidele wrote:
I want to start learning D programming language it looks 
interesting


The free digital book from Ali, is written to fit your need:

https://ddili.org/ders/d.en/index.html

Re: Is D programming friendly for beginners?

[M.M. via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Tuesday, 12 March 2024 at 22:27:11 UTC, Mike Shah wrote:

On Tuesday, 12 March 2024 at 20:40:49 UTC, Meta wrote:

On Tuesday, 12 March 2024 at 16:20:29 UTC, matheus. wrote:

[...]


I think it really depends on the person. My first language was 
C++, which was absolute hell to learn as a complete beginner 
to programming, but I really wanted to learn a language with 
low-level capabilities that could also do gamedev. Learning 
C++ as my first language was incredibly difficult, but it also 
made the programming parts of my CS degree a breeze - 
especially courses like machine level programming. Nobody else 
in the class even understood what a pointer was for the first 
couple weeks.


I've been at institutions where C++ is the first language and 
for most folks who were sure they wanted to do programming it 
was a fine enough language (when taught with care) to teach. In 
fact, it benefited me (and other instructors) quite a bit when 
I saw those students later and taught them computer graphics 
(usually taught in C++ to prepare them for job market).


For folks who were not sure if they wanted to study computer 
science, unfortunately they were scared away as they thought 
this was the only path for programming (i.e. C++, assembly, 
etc.). For this reason, a language that is gentler (e.g. 
Python, JavaScript, or I also suspect a large subset of D) 
would all have been better choices. More universities these 
days are offering courses with gentler options (e.g. 
Programming for non-majors) which usually take this approach to 
more slowly ramp students up -- which I think is a good thing 
to have these offerings. And then later on in the program, 
these students can learn the good stuff (i.e. systems, 
compilers, graphics, etc. :) )


I understand that outside of CS, something like Python is a fine 
choice, hiding many low-level details. But within a 
CS-curriculum, one needs to come beyond basics-of-programming to 
something like efficient algorithm-design-and-data-structures; 
isn't a typed language better here? (Like the quote of Knuth 
says: if you do not understand the hardware behind, your programs 
will look weird. I have observed this a lot with current 
data-science students, which use a map/dictionary for everything, 
largely ignoring the existence of arrays).