Here's looking at you, kid

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 08:51:13 UTC, Warwick wrote:
> On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 01:28:00 UTC, rsw0x wrote:
>> On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 00:47:17 UTC, Warwick wrote:
>>> On Thursday, 19 November 2015 at 12:28:44 UTC, Andrei 
>>> Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>> On 11/18/2015 11:02 PM, Saurabh Das wrote:
>>>>> [...]
>>>>
>>>> Generally a language reference is not good for learning a 
>>>> language. -- Andrei
>>>
>>> IE. There's nothing on the D website that is "good for 
>>> learning" D.
>>>
>>> There's an offsite tutorial aimed at "absolute begginers".
>>>
>>> ****ing great set of options aint it.
>>
>> Ali's book is not a tutorial or aimed at absolute beginners, 
>> it's /the/ material for learning D and in my opinion a great 
>> reference book.
>
> It says on the website and I quote... "a great starting point 
> for absolute beginners"
>
> But the fundamental problem and what everyone seems to be 
> refusing to acknowledge is that in spite of what *you think 
> people should be doing* many visitors are ending up using 
> language reference to learn D.
>
> Or they use that reference to get their first impressions.
>
> It's like going to a restaurant and being given the recipes 
> instead of the menu.
>
> But keep burying you heads in the ground.

Would you bother to define "beginners"? Someone studying biology 
who has to use some script like stuff to process DNA sequences, 
with no programming experience at all? Or someone who comes from 
C++ and wants to try something different? Someone who's 
interested in programming and wants to write apps for mobile 
phones?

My experience is that people who come to D already know other 
programming languages (and that's basically why they end up here).