On Saturday, 4 July 2020 at 10:32:12 UTC, aberba wrote:
> I'm looking to do a general but brief post on getting started with D. Not everything will be written by me since I'm aware there's several existing resources...more of creating an entry point to all those resources (and writing more only when necessary). I'm looking to cover areas such as:
>
> * Pros of D... general D's strength kind of getting you excited.

I was looking a more "system-level" alternative to Java. As C++ looked a bit scary and very janky (it's like programming in two languages at the same time, also there's the header), I took a look at D I've heard a few things at the time.

> * Leaning resources.

Ali Mehdi's book a good resource and starting point. Also it's very similar to other languages, like C and Java.

> * Development tools available in D Window, Linux, Mac

When I started out, I used a barely functioning CodeBlocks plugin, later I switched to Xamarin, then to VS2015/17, now I'm using VSCode for coding and compiling. I also use VS2019 as a Windows debugger, while I'll either go with GDB or LLDB for Linux.

> * Setting up a development environment

Just install DMD (LDC if you need the optimization and/or vectors), and VSCode with it's codeD extension.

> * Resources for game and graphics developers

Unfortunately there's not much at the moment due to the lack of engines for the language, however I'm planning on writing an article on the basic tips on game engine writing in D.

> * How and where to get help

This forum, also most of the D community is good. I only found one or two "weird" people, that's all.

> * D community platforms (forum, IRC, ???)

Join the D language Discord if you haven't yet.

> * How to contribute to D

Mine is mostly through creating my own libraries around stuff that I don't find in other libraries.
No container library that satisfies my needs? Write `collections-d`! Need a better image library than what currently is available? Write `dimage`!
Most of them don't have a good README.MD yet, my goal is to fix this issue ASAP.

> On Saturday, 4 July 2020 at 10:32:12 UTC, aberba wrote:
> > I'm looking to do a general but brief post on getting started with D.  Not everything will be written by me since I'm aware there's several existing resources...more of creating an entry point to all those resources (and writing more only when necessary). I'm looking to cover areas such as:
> > 
> > * Pros of D... general D's strength kind of getting you excited.

Where do I even begin... :-P  When I first found D, I was looking for a better programming language than C/C++.  Had been using C/C++ for at least a decade by then, but was becoming increasingly dissatisfied.

Initial impressions (in no particular order):
- Pros:
   - Compiled language (I was, and still am, skeptical of VMs).
   - Cleaner template syntax.
   - Built-in AA's.
   - Sane string handling.
   - Syntactic similarity to C/C++.
   - Binary compatibility with C/C++.
- Cons:
   - GC: having been burned by early, poorer GC implementations in Java
     way back when, and having acquired tons of GC Phobia from C/C++, I
     was a big skeptic of GCs.

Later impressions (also in no particular order):
- Pros:
   - Metaprogramming: the biggest reason I still use D in spite of its
     flaws.
   - GC: yeah, I had an about-face on this one. Andrei's article about
     GC performance convinced me to at least give D a try. Gradually I
     discovered the advantages of GC and have been loving it ever since.
   - Arrays & slicing.  Strings as arrays: not perfect, but practical,
     convenient, powerful.
   - Ranges.
   - Built-in unittests.  The quality of my code improved by leaps and
     bounds because of this one feature alone.
   - Delegates: used correctly, they can really clean up your code by
     minimizing unnecessary dependencies.
   - foreach
   - final switch
   - compile speed
   - `dmd -`, the single best thing that's ever happened to DMD, which
     allows D one-liners to replace messy shell scripts.
   - The smooth transformation from throw-away script to full-fledged
     program over time.
   - Multi-paradigm: fit the language to your problem domain, rather
     than contorting your problem to fit the language's straitjacket.
   - Many others too numerous to list.
- Cons:
   - Corner-case inconsistencies in the language, like the haphazard
     is() expressions, shared, ref, etc.. Fortunately these are
     relatively rare.
   - C-style integer promotion. Esp. auto-promotion from narrow ints to
     int, which are an annoyance.
   - Old Phobos modules that aren't up to the standard of modern D.
   - Mismanaged/missed opportunities and indecisions due to community
     disagreements.
   - dub: really needs to either embrace and allow easy interop with
     existing build frameworks like make, scons, etc., or else provide a
     big enough value in functionality and QoI to provide a compelling
     reason to adopt its mode of usage. Currently it tries to do what
     e.g. Gradle does, but poorly, so it neither satisfies interop with
     make-likes nor does what it does well enough that one might find a
     compelling reason to switch.


[...]
> > * Leaning resources.

TDPL: the one reason I dived deep into using D instead of just wading on the shallow end of the pool writing hello world programs.

Also dlang.org docs. For all of its flaws, the online docs have come a long way, and definitely better than when I first started (there was almost no docs, and what was there was incomplete, outdated, and generally not very useful).

The forums/mailing lists. People are generally very helpful.

Reading Phobos source code is also highly recommended for the serious programmer -- except for a few dirty/ugly corners, it's generally a lot more readable than other languages' standard lib source code. (Try reading glibc source code, for example. Or ncurses. Or maybe, don't; they will give you a splitting headache for days.)


[...]
> > * Development tools available in D Window, Linux, Mac

Linux: dmd, ldc2 are really all I need. Linux is my IDE. :-D

For editing code, I use vim.  For builds, any sane build system would do, like tup or scons.  If you must, use dub for fetching dependencies, but personally I'd just use a dummy empty project just for pulling in dependencies, and doing the actual build with a real build system instead.

For profiling, I recommend google-perftools.


> > * Setting up a development environment

	apt-get install vim scons gdb

Ready! ;-)


[...]
> > * Resources for game and graphics developers

For simple casual 2D games, I highly recommend using Adam Ruppe's arsd.* libraries.  No fuss, no muss, they get right on the job, have no frilly dependencies, and generally work great for getting things up and running immediately.

For larger projects, though, it's true there's somewhat of a vacuum. There's Derelict (which I've been meaning to try but never got around to is for, oh, a decade now :-/).  If you want a full-fledged modern 3D engine, consider using D's C interop features to interface with an existing one, like Unity. (No idea how well that works in practice, though.)


[...]
> > * How and where to get help

This forum, and the D.learn forum.  Apparently some helpful people like Adam are on IRC as well, and apparently also on Reddit.  Don't use those places myself, though.


[...]
> > * How to contribute to D

1. Discover a problem (e.g., in Phobos).

2. File a bug.

3. Get impatient with slow response (or total lack thereof), and go read
   Phobos source code yourself.

4. Discover how readable Phobos source code is, fix the bug yourself,
   submit a PR.

5. Take a good, long nap.  Well, more like hibernation, until some kind
   reviewer soul takes pity on your languishing PR and gives feedback.

6. Fix all issues raised, take another good, winter-long nap as the
   autotester churns along its days-long backlog.

7. Wake up to find PR merged. Profit!

;-)

(Alternative to step 5: raise holy hell in the forums until enough people pay attention to your PR, then go to step 6.)


Or, another scenario:

1. Discover some missing functionality that you need.

2. File an enhancement request / beg for somebody to write this for you
   on the forum.

3. Lose patience over the lack of change/progress / get tired of the
   never-ending debates that never result in any actual work getting
   done, and proceed to write the darned thing yourself.

4. Publish the code on github / code.dlang.org, brag about it on the
   forums, and earn lots of gratitude and praise.

5. Profit!

;-)


T

-- 
EMACS = Extremely Massive And Cumbersome System

On Tuesday, 7 July 2020 at 22:17:12 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> Apparently some helpful people like Adam are on IRC
> as well

IRC rox. As long as you can handle me spamming non-stop about the random thoughts on my mind. Lately I've been talking as much in there about solar power and house projects as I do about D :P

but if anyone stops in and asks stuff, yeah, we all try to help if we're online. there's lulls though where nobody is paying attention, so you might not get an instant response.

> and apparently also on Reddit.

i hate reddit

On Tuesday, 7 July 2020 at 22:17:12 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>> 
>
> [...]

Thank you! First time I'm reading about certain things myself. Very insightful. Really going to be using a lot from this.

Also, wish more people discard their GC phobia-ness and see D's GC as something that works for many use cases.

It'll be very interesting to see a debugging session on D. I'm not sure there's enough learning resources on that.

On Saturday, 4 July 2020 at 10:32:12 UTC, aberba wrote:
> * Resources for embedded programming

Does this statement still stand for D?

> Being targeted at 32 bit and 64 bit machines, D is not designed for embedded development on small devices.

On Saturday, 4 July 2020 at 10:32:12 UTC, aberba wrote:
> I'm looking to do a general but brief post on getting started with D. Not everything will be written by me since I'm aware there's several existing resources...more of creating an entry point to all those resources (and writing more only when necessary). I'm looking to cover areas such as:
>
> * Pros of D... general D's strength kind of getting you excited.
> * Leaning resources.
> * Development tools available in D Window, Linux, Mac
> * Setting up a development environment
> * Resources from web/server-side developers (which I know more  about than the others by experience)
> * Resources for game and graphics developers
> * Resources for scientific computing
> * Resources for desktops development (system, GUIs, ...??)
> * Resources for data science (taken separately from general scientific computation)
> * Resources for embedded programming
> * Resources for ??? (Let me know what else I'm missing)
> * How and where to get help
> * D community platforms (forum, IRC, ???)
> * How to contribute to D
>
>
> The point of this post is to:
> 1. Know what helped you get started with D
> 2. What else you think its worth mentioning
> 3. Things that weren't immediately obvious when you started using D and you probably found out the hard way.
>
>
> I'm trying to balance between keeping it short but detailed enough to make it useful to all sorts of people looking to get started with D.
>
> I think I'll probably do a separate on on contributing back to the D ecosystem and tools...open source outreach kind of post.
>
> So please let me have your input.

For scientific computing.

D Mir -- high-performance numeric library.
github: https://github.com/libmir/mir-algorithm
docs: http://mir-algorithm.libmir.org/mir_ndslice_slice.html

Vectorflow -- neural network library for on CPU training.
github: https://github.com/Netflix/vectorflow
docs: dub build -b ddox && dub run -b ddox

Lubeck -- linear algebra library based on D Mir.
github: https://github.com/kaleidicassociates/lubeck

grain -- deep learning library (very early stages and looks like the author is busy with another project).
github: https://github.com/ShigekiKarita/grain
pdf: https://github.com/ShigekiKarita/grain-talk/blob/master/slide.pdf

For data science.

dstats -- statistics library for D. I am not aware if it is maintained though.
https://github.com/DlangScience/dstats

On Thursday, 16 July 2020 at 19:08:22 UTC, tastyminerals wrote:
> On Saturday, 4 July 2020 at 10:32:12 UTC, aberba wrote:
>> [...]
>
> For scientific computing.
>
> D Mir -- high-performance numeric library.
> github: https://github.com/libmir/mir-algorithm
> docs: http://mir-algorithm.libmir.org/mir_ndslice_slice.html
>
> [...]


Nice, thank you!

I've begun writing it.