On Monday, 13 January 2020 at 10:28:48 UTC, mark wrote:
> I'm just starting out learning D.
>
> Andrei Alexandrescu's "The D Programming Language" is 10 years old, so is it still worth getting? (I don't know how much D has changed in 10 years.)

I found the book amazing. It not only explains the language, but also how things work behind the scenes. For a book on programming languages it's written in an entertaining style. It's also a joy to see how beautiful the design of D is, compared to languages like C++ or C#.

But...

The book is definitely not written for beginners. You should at least have a good understanding of C (Especially the concept of pointers). Even though the chapter on pointers is only 2 pages long, the word "pointer" occurs 155 times in the book (I made a quick search over my ebook version).

Thanks for all the comments. Look's like I'll be buying Mike's "Learning D"!

On Monday, 13 January 2020 at 11:58:51 UTC, mark wrote:
> Both those books are published by Packt who normally have no quality control at all as I've discovered to my cost.

I found working with Packt to be difficult on a lot of levels too. Like chapter 1 of my book had various symbols mangled through the review process... and that made it to print. (I realized the problem through the chapter 2 process at least and fixed most of it there, but once chapter 1 was submitted there was no chance to go back and fix it.)

So like there's stuff like

import foo;;;

with 3 ; actually in there. Ugh. But at least those are easy to fix if you already know basic D syntax and doesn't affect the explanatory text, which (I think anyway) mostly turned quite good.

I also have downloads of the intended code samples on my website:

http://arsdnet.net/dcode/book/

so you can look there too (and copy/paste more easily!).

also spying the code samples there will give you some idea of what the text is about before buying as well.

I recently did an unofficial second edition of the socket sample on my blog too so that's a freebie lol http://dpldocs.info/this-week-in-d/Blog.Posted_2019_11_11.html#sockets-tutorial

On Monday, 13 January 2020 at 10:28:48 UTC, mark wrote:
> I'm just starting out learning D.
>
> Andrei Alexandrescu's "The D Programming Language" is 10 years old, so is it still worth getting? (I don't know how much D has changed in 10 years.)

Actually, Andrei's book has been updated a few times over the years since first being published. The latest version says this on the copyright page:

D version: 2.081.1
Book revision: 2018-10-17

So, it's really only about 14 months old.

On Monday, 13 January 2020 at 16:37:31 UTC, Ron Tarrant wrote:
> Actually, Andrei's book has been updated a few times over the years since first being published. The latest version says this on the copyright page:
>
> D version: 2.081.1
> Book revision: 2018-10-17
>
> So, it's really only about 14 months old.

Is that an ebook edition? The "look inside" of the physical book shows "First Printing, May 2010".

On Monday, 13 January 2020 at 10:28:48 UTC, mark wrote:
> I'm just starting out learning D.
>
> Andrei Alexandrescu's "The D Programming Language" is 10 years old, so is it still worth getting? (I don't know how much D has changed in 10 years.)

Start with "Programming in D" by Ali: http://ddili.org/ders/d.en/index.html
A good all-rounder book for any level, you can easily skip the chapters if you already know the domain. It starts slowly with a lot of detail (which I personally liked) but then gets a bit rushed and sketchy in the end still a **must-read** for anyone who comes from Python or any other "high level" language since a lot of things will be new to you.

After studying Ali's book you will be pretty much ready to code, in fact you'll be ready to code in roughly a week or so since D is such an easy language to pick up ;)

Then you can go straight to "D Cookbook" by Adam: https://dlang.org/blog/2016/08/04/the-origins-of-the-d-cookbook/
Don't start this book if you don't know D at least a little or if you're quite experienced with C++. I find that C++ devs can quickly jump to D. The book is basically a collection of various problems and solutions in D with nice explanations. I am still on it.

"The D Programming Language" book by Andrei: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321635361/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0321635361&linkCode=as2&tag=dlang-20&linkId=BOLS7NQK6MXCZTMG
I really enjoy Anrei's style of writing but I think this book is mostly an good evening read that is -- it is more about the history and ideas behind D. Good for high level understanding of the language concepts. (Correct me if I am wrong because I haven't read it fully yet).

Finally, you have plenty of materials on dlang website:
https://dlang.org/comparison.html
https://dlang.org/articles/index.html

On Monday, 13 January 2020 at 16:45:46 UTC, mark wrote:
> On Monday, 13 January 2020 at 16:37:31 UTC, Ron Tarrant wrote:
>> Actually, Andrei's book has been updated a few times over the years since first being published. The latest version says this on the copyright page:
>>
>> D version: 2.081.1
>> Book revision: 2018-10-17
>>
>> So, it's really only about 14 months old.
>
> Is that an ebook edition? The "look inside" of the physical book shows "First Printing, May 2010".

(Oh, you can't post-edit like in discourse.)

Anyway, I'll start with Mike's and if I get on with D I'll probably get all three.

On Mon, Jan 13, 2020 at 04:23:19AM -0800, Ali Çehreli via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote:
> On 1/13/20 2:28 AM, mark wrote:
> > I'm just starting out learning D.
> > 
> > Andrei Alexandrescu's "The D Programming Language" is 10 years old, so is it still worth getting? (I don't know how much D has changed in 10 years.)
[...]

I think it's still worth it.  The basics of the language haven't changed that much.  Plus, for your reference, here's Andrei errata that updates the book in a few places:

	https://erdani.com/tdpl/errata/


T

-- 
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next. -- (Stolen from the net)

Has anyone read "d programming language tutorial: A Step By Step Appoach: Learn d programming language Fast"?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38328553-d-programming-language-tutorial?from_search=true&qid=G9QIeXioOJ&rank=3

On Wednesday, 29 January 2020 at 08:40:48 UTC, p.shkadzko wrote:
> Has anyone read "d programming language tutorial: A Step By Step Appoach: Learn d programming language Fast"?
>
> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38328553-d-programming-language-tutorial?from_search=true&qid=G9QIeXioOJ&rank=3

Beware, this is a scam.
This guy has hundreds of "books". These books are promoted on various forums for download. Of course, you must enter your CC to "prove your identity".