Here's looking at you, kid

[Chris Wright via Digitalmars-d]

On Fri, 20 Nov 2015 14:41:04 +0000, Chris wrote:
> Yep, what can one say.
> 
> 1. Who goes to the language reference, when they want to _learn_ a
> language?

It's the obvious place if you're familiar with other programming 
languages. Tutorials tend to be geared toward people who have little to 
no programming experience, who view learning a new language (even in a 
paradigm they're used to) as a large thing.

We were all there once, but we're not all there now. When I learn a new 
language, I want typically 20-30 lines of example code and a language 
reference. I can start writing code after reading a short example, and I 
can use the language reference to fill in the remaining gaps. The 
language reference is usually both denser and better categorized for my 
needs.

> 2. If you really want to learn a language, you will learn it. There are
> enough resources for D now, there's room for improvement, but there
> always is.

I was choosing between programming languages a while ago, most of which I 
hadn't used before. For each of them, it wasn't the case that I wanted to 
learn them, but I knew I probably wanted to use one of them.

If any of them were as obtuse to learn as D, I would have skipped past 
them post haste.

If I'm evaluating a programming language to start using at work, I will 
evaluate it on how easy it is for me to accomplish things in that 
language and how easy it will be for my coworkers to start using the 
language. My coworkers mostly know Ruby and are just tentatively 
switching to Java. Moving to Haskell probably isn't an option despite the 
existence of decent tutorials, but D is similar enough that they could 
learn -- assuming there are good tutorials readily available.

> I know, catering for the "one second attention span" crowd is a recipe
> for success, if you deal with PHP or JS. But D is not in that league.
> Even if you cater for them, they will soon be frustrated anyway, because
> for D you'll need a deeper understanding of things, sooner or later.

You were contemptuous toward PHP and JavaScript, and now you are being 
contemptuous toward people who are potentially interested in learning D. 
Please be more respectful.