January 22, 2013
On Mon, 21 Jan 2013 18:27:10 -0800
Walter Bright <newshound2@digitalmars.com> wrote:

> On 1/21/2013 6:16 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> > On Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:17:26 -0500
> > Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org> wrote:
> >
> >> On 1/21/13 2:01 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> >>> If I were a savvy businessman (read: no ethical fiber)
> >>
> >> Now that came out of left field.
> >>
> >
> > I'm not sure what point you're trying to make by lifting that (arbitrary?) part of my sentence out of its full intended context:
> >
> > "[portion actually quoted here], I would manufacture a line of fire alarms advertised as being 100% silent[...etc...]and sell them exclusively to programmers."
> >
> > The point, of course, being that preferring to forgo the safety and static checks that a static language provides is comparable to preferring silent fire alarms (Ie because they're both good things to be explicitly warned about, and deliberately silencing them is shortsighted and ill-advised). You seem to have latched on to some insignificant detail there and misinterpreted it, though I'm not sure exactly what or how.
> >
> > You're not suggesting that trying to sell non-working fire alarms would be *ethical* are you? I wouldn't think so, but I'm not really sure what your point is.
> >
> 
> I think he suggested the quote equated being a savvy businessman with having no ethical fiber.

Ok, it was a misunderstanding of a minor detail then. That's not what I was saying.

The "selling silent fire alarms" would clearly require a lack of ethics
(either that, or at the very least a major deficiency in
one's understanding of the purpose and usage of fire alarms - but
that's getting even more pedantic). Or, if you wanted to be very
euphemistic about it, or if the ethics were beside the main point being
made (as was the case above), you *could* refer to it as "savvy
businessman" even though that would quite obviously be only *part* of
the truth and therefore somewhat of a mischaracterization. Hence the
sidenote of "read: no ethical fiber".

IOW: If I mention a red ball, I'm not calling all balls red.

January 22, 2013
On Monday, 21 January 2013 at 22:20:45 UTC, Thiez wrote:
> Nick, Teoh, what exactly do you guys hope to accomplish with your current discussion? What if someone who comes from a dynamically typed language wants to check out D and reads that vitriolic crap the two of you are spewing? I'm sure they'll feel very welcome knowing that what appears to be the D community thinks their current language of choice (which may simply be because it is the only language they have gotten a chance to learn) is cancer and a plague, that they are a fool, a dumbass, not a real programmer, and are guaranteed to write garbage. They will turn around and never return. And they'd be right. Why would they want to become part of a community that actively hates and despises them?
>

Well, if people can't make a difference between themselve and a programming language, they have really bad psychological issues.

> Look, I get it, the two of you don't like dynamic typing. Neither do I. That is no absolutely excuse to bash dynamically typed languages and the people who use them. I expect D users can be divided into two groups: one with people that already prefer statically typed languages (in which case you are preaching to the choir), and one that consists of people who think both static- and dynamically typed languages have their uses (in which case they are probably well aware of the pros and cons and you are not going to convince them, but you will manage to leave the impression that they are not *really* welcome).
>

I use dynamically typed language on a daily basis at work. It doesn't prevent me to acknowledge it is complete crap. I also understand that I am not the programming language, so I don't feel bad about it.

> Take a moment to think about on the impression you are creating. If you really need a dynamic-typing-circlejerk every now and then, consider having it in private or in a context where it will not reflect badly on the D community.

OK, let's start the politically correct game.

dynamically typed language are great, but they have issue X and Y sounds much better.
January 22, 2013
On 1/21/2013 7:17 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> I think he suggested the quote equated being a savvy businessman with
>> having no ethical fiber.
>
> Ok, it was a misunderstanding of a minor detail then. That's not what I
> was saying.

No prob.

January 22, 2013
On Mon, 21 Jan 2013 19:14:16 -0800
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 11:20:44PM +0100, Thiez wrote:
> > Nick, Teoh, what exactly do you guys hope to accomplish with your current discussion? What if someone who comes from a dynamically typed language wants to check out D and reads that vitriolic crap the two of you are spewing? I'm sure they'll feel very welcome knowing that what appears to be the D community thinks their current language of choice (which may simply be because it is the only language they have gotten a chance to learn) is cancer and a plague, that they are a fool, a dumbass, not a real programmer, and are guaranteed to write garbage. They will turn around and never return. And they'd be right. Why would they want to become part of a community that actively hates and despises them?
> [...]
> 
> Let me set the record straight. I was merely writing my evaluation of languages that I have tried before, and I never intended to attack anyone personally. If I did, then I apologize. Criticizing a language does not equal attacking the people associated with it. But avoiding personal attacks does not exclude criticizing a language for what I perceive as its flaws.
> 

Same goes for me, too, but I wouldn't have been able to express it quite so clearly.

Related note: If I go to a Python forum, I'm going to expect that I might see anti-static-typing sentiment from some people. Just like if you go to a Paul Greengrass fan forum, you kinda have to expect you might see "What's wrong with shaking the camera all around?" ;) If I then choose to get in a huf over it, *I'd* be the unreasonable one for expecting...well, for expecting not to see a leaf in the middle of a forest.

January 22, 2013
On Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:03:55 -0500
Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org> wrote:

> On 1/21/13 3:06 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> > I have to admit that ddoc hasn't really done it for me (yet). I
> > think the impediment is that the default output needs some work
> > (mainly in CSS and indexing) before it is useful as actual
> > documentation.
> 
> We should make a few macro batteries (HTML, mobi, pdf) readily
> available in e.g. tools/ or examples/.
> 

Is that possible? PDF is binary, but I thought DDoc only did text output? Come to think of it, how *do* the non-html versions of the docs currently get generated?

January 22, 2013
On Tue, 22 Jan 2013 04:21:41 +0100
"deadalnix" <deadalnix@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Monday, 21 January 2013 at 22:20:45 UTC, Thiez wrote:
> 
> > Take a moment to think about on the impression you are creating. If you really need a dynamic-typing-circlejerk every now and then, consider having it in private or in a context where it will not reflect badly on the D community.
> 
> OK, let's start the politically correct game.
> 
> dynamically typed language are great, but they have issue X and Y sounds much better.

I like this game!

My turn:

Dynamic languages are great, but I hate them, they're total junk, and I want them all to go away.

Did I win? :)

Oh well, back to Disgaea...Erm...I mean "work"...

January 22, 2013
On 1/21/13 10:32 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:03:55 -0500
> Andrei Alexandrescu<SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org>  wrote:
>
>> On 1/21/13 3:06 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>>> I have to admit that ddoc hasn't really done it for me (yet). I
>>> think the impediment is that the default output needs some work
>>> (mainly in CSS and indexing) before it is useful as actual
>>> documentation.
>>
>> We should make a few macro batteries (HTML, mobi, pdf) readily
>> available in e.g. tools/ or examples/.
>>
>
> Is that possible? PDF is binary, but I thought DDoc only did text
> output? Come to think of it, how *do* the non-html versions of the docs
> currently get generated?

LaTeX.

Andrei

January 22, 2013
On 2013-01-20 10:52, SaltySugar wrote:
> Why it isn't popular?  We must popularize it. There aren't any tutorials with D, books and other stuff. How about writing a D programming forum?


Hi, I have just return to D after some years of absents,
so I am sorry if some of what I write is incorrect.

== Massive open online courses (MOOC's) ==

According to this study http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2ITaI4y7_0 Many people pick up a new language when taking a course/education.

With the reason rise of MOOC's (see https://class-central.com/)
I think that making an interesting MOOC where D is used extensive would
be good way to make D popular.

I have taken some MOOCs and been exposed different languages in the
process.
1) Octave in Probabilistic Graphical Models.
2) R in Introduction to Computational Finance and Financial Econometrics.
3) Python in Web Intelligence and Big Data, Software Debugging,
Computational Investing.

For me it is important that the course is not about D but about an
interesting subject
where D fit perfect as a tool. I have given it some thoughts and I think
robotics is a
good subject for such a course. You both need code which is close to the
hardware
and a language where you can make abstract AI algorithms.

I think a course like "nand to tetris" (http://www.nand2tetris.org/)
for robotics is highly needed, because for robotics a good foundation in
mechanical-, electronic- and software-engineering is need
and I don't know any single MOOC's which provide this foundation.


== online documentation ==
When I returned to D I felt very frustrated with D online documentation.
After looking for root of the feeling i found that the reason was that
I was used to the documentation of php.
In php each function have a page of it own. (Closely resembling the unix
man page)
This means that if I search for "php strip" google send me to
http://php.net/manual/en/function.trim.php

Where the first line tells me:
trim — Strip whitespace (or other characters) from the beginning and end
of a string

So It is very fast to see if I got the right page.

If I search for "dlang strip" I am send to
http://dlang.org/phobos/std_string.html.
Then I have to look through the document to find the right function
and to find that functions typical is missing examples and good
descriptions of parameters and return values.

(I think that the example part can be improved by automatic including
unittest in the documentation,
which would also insure that the examples is working.)
(When documents is generated ddoc could test for if description for
parameters and return values was present)

Also another thing I like about the php documentation is the user notes
at the bottom of the page,
I know you are trying to make something simmilar with the "Improve this
page" and "Page wiki" at the top,
but I have to say that I don't think it works as well.

==  Geting the job done ==
All in all I think the language popularity comes down to one central thing.
"Does it get the job done" !! and it also the reason I have returned to
D after years of absent.
It is because of vibe http://vibed.org/ in the world of today almost
every company have to have a web-site.
So, there is a lots of jobs building web-sites, but D hadn't had a
dissent web framework until now AFAIK.
Remember that ruby was a small language before ruby on rails.
While vibe have some way to go it is a good start.

== Thanks, for all ==

While somethings could be better, I think D is amazing !


Knud


January 22, 2013
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 10:57:39PM -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 1/21/13 10:32 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> >On Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:03:55 -0500
> >Andrei Alexandrescu<SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org>  wrote:
> >
> >>On 1/21/13 3:06 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> >>>I have to admit that ddoc hasn't really done it for me (yet). I
> >>>think the impediment is that the default output needs some work
> >>>(mainly in CSS and indexing) before it is useful as actual
> >>>documentation.
> >>
> >>We should make a few macro batteries (HTML, mobi, pdf) readily
> >>available in e.g. tools/ or examples/.
> >>
> >
> >Is that possible? PDF is binary, but I thought DDoc only did text output? Come to think of it, how *do* the non-html versions of the docs currently get generated?
> 
> LaTeX.
[...]

Speaking of which, did you manage to polish up the LaTeX macros to produce decent output? I'd love to take a look if you did -- I'm a LaTeX fan.


T

-- 
Those who've learned LaTeX swear by it. Those who are learning LaTeX swear at it. -- Pete Bleackley
January 22, 2013
On Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:19:36 -0800
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
> 
> Speaking of which, did you manage to polish up the LaTeX macros to produce decent output? I'd love to take a look if you did -- I'm a LaTeX fan.
> 
> T
> 
> -- 
> Those who've learned LaTeX swear by it. Those who are learning LaTeX swear at it. -- Pete Bleackley

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