Here's looking at you, kid

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 20 November 2015 at 16:39:52 UTC, Chris Wright wrote:
> 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.

Have you been able to learn D? Yes or no? I'm sorry, if I'm not 
always politically correct and I'm the first one to understand 
the needs of programming novices, because we've all been there 
(as you pointed out). My point is that for D you will need a 
deeper understanding of things, and Ali's book provides this. D 
is not like Javscript where type "alert('Hello, world!');" and go 
"Yeah!". One cannot always blame D and its community for mistakes 
and/or bad choices people make.