Following my previous post about showing to first-time visitors of dlang.org some code example that shows how simpler the D code looks like compared to mainstream scripting and programming languages, is there any plan to change the design of the landing page any time soon ?

The current design may be fine to convincing C++ experts to switch to D, but I don't think it's that effective for less experienced programmers, looking for an alternative to JavaScript, Python or Ruby.

I'm a big fan of the python.org website, which is obviously targeted at inexperienced programmers.

I've personally taught imperative and object-oriented programming to my two teenager kids just with D and Coedit, and it really was the perfect beginner language.

D is powerful, indeed, but it's greatest quality is that it's easy to learn.

Sorry to come back with this sample, but the following code snippet is actually even simpler than what they were able to program after one week at one hour of training per day.

class TOTO
{
    bool IsCool;
    int Age;
    TUTU[] Tutus;
    TOTO[string] Totos;

    void Foo( TUTU tutu )
    {
        Tutus ~= tutu;
        Totos[ tutu.Name ] = tutu.Toto;
    }
}

class TUTU
{
    string Name;
    TOTO Toto;

    this( string name )
    {
        Name = name;
        Toto = new TOTO;
    }
}

void Bar(
    TOTO toto
    )
{
    toto.IsCool = !toto.IsCool;
}

void main()
{
    TUTU tutu;
    TOTO toto;

    tutu = new TUTU( "tutu" );

    toto = new TOTO;
    toto.Foo( tutu );
    toto.Bar();
}

I'm sure it's mainly because of D's elegant simplicity, even compared to JavaScript, Python, etc.

Selling D as a solid programming language for high performance development is obvious and natural, but I think that trying to make the website very appealing to inexperienced programmers as well could significantly broaden its user base.

On Thursday, 22 June 2017 at 19:19:20 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
> Following my previous post about showing to first-time visitors of dlang.org some code example that shows how simpler the D code looks like compared to mainstream scripting and programming languages, is there any plan to change the design of the landing page any time soon ?
>
> [...]

Just so you know the current design was set less than a year ago so while I'm in no position to say no change will happen this seems unlikely. But dlang.org is, like everything, open source so you could make a proposal.

On 06/22/2017 09:19 PM, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
> The current design may be fine to convincing C++ experts to switch to D, but I don't think it's that effective for less experienced programmers, looking for an alternative to JavaScript, Python or Ruby.
> 
> I'm a big fan of the python.org website, which is obviously targeted at inexperienced programmers.

I think you'll have to elaborate on that. How is python.org "obviously" targeted at inexperienced programmers and dlang.org isn't? The home pages look rather similar to me: menu, search box, code sample, sales pitch, those text boxes with icons, etc.

What would you change on dlang.org? Completely overhaul everything, or just adjust the wording and other details to be more targeted at newbie programmers?

> I think you'll have to elaborate on that. How is python.org "obviously" targeted at inexperienced programmers and dlang.org isn't? The home pages look rather similar to me: menu, search box, code sample, sales pitch, those text boxes with icons, etc.
>
> What would you change on dlang.org? Completely overhaul everything, or just adjust the wording and other details to be more targeted at newbie programmers?

First, please notice how simple the landing page is.

Its nice visual design exhibits simplicity, and obvioulsy uses a few text as possible to convey the message.

I've recently studied web development for two years, and believe me, while not perfect, this landing page clearly matches many of the requirements we were taught.

And about the advertising target, the first text paragraph block below the code carousel you will read is :

"Get Started

Whether you're new to programming or an experienced developer, it's easy to learn and use Python.

Start with our Beginner’s Guide"

Pretty self-explanatory :)

It's actually the same message than in the code carousel, at slide 4 :

"Quick & Easy to Learn

Experienced programmers in any other language can pick up Python very quickly, and beginners find the clean syntax and indentation structure easy to learn. Whet your appetite with our Python 3 overview."

I would summarize their moto as :

1/ Python is a scripting language that gets the job done quickly ("Python is a programming language that lets you work quickly and integrate systems more effectively.")

2/ Python is very easy to learn, not only for experienced developers, but also for beginners ("Whether you're new to programming or an experienced developer, it's easy to learn and use Python.")

And look at the code snippets on the five slides of the carousel.

* First sample code :

# Python 3: Fibonacci series up to n
>>> def fib(n):
>>>     a, b = 0, 1
>>>     while a < n:
>>>         print(a, end=' ')
>>>         a, b = b, a+b
>>>     print()
>>> fib(1000)


* Second sample code :

# Python 3: List comprehensions
>>> fruits = ['Banana', 'Apple', 'Lime']
>>> loud_fruits = [fruit.upper() for fruit in fruits]
>>> print(loud_fruits)
['BANANA', 'APPLE', 'LIME']

# List and the enumerate function
>>> list(enumerate(fruits))
[(0, 'Banana'), (1, 'Apple'), (2, 'Lime')]


* Third sample code :

# Python 3: Simple arithmetic
>>> 1 / 2
0.5
>>> 2 ** 3
8
>>> 17 / 3  # classic division returns a float
5.666666666666667
>>> 17 // 3  # floor division
5


* Fourth sample code :

# Python 3: Simple output (with Unicode)
>>> print("Hello, I'm Python!")
Hello, I'm Python!

# Input, assignment
>>> name = input('What is your name?\n')
>>> print('Hi, %s.' % name)
What is your name?
Python
Hi, Python.


* Fifth sample code :

# For loop on a list
>>> numbers = [2, 4, 6, 8]
>>> product = 1
>>> for number in numbers:
...    product = product * number
...
>>> print('The product is:', product)
The product is: 384


These code snippets are very very simple !!! Almost baby code ;)

It seems pretty obvious to me that Python's code carousel targets beginner programmers, showing them simple code that they will easily understand.

This website is very effective at convincing people that learning to program in Python won't require much efforts, even if you are new to programming.

And I think that this message alone could be one of key reasons which explain Python is so popular, among others...

And when I say popular, I mean it.

Python is #4 at the Tiobe index (https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index) :

1. Java
2. C
3. C++
4. Python
5. C#
6. VB .NET
7. JavaScript
8. PHP
...

It's also #4 on the programming language popularity chart (http://langpop.corger.nl) :

1. JavaScript
2. Java
3. PHP
4. Python
5. C#
6. C++
...

And #3 on the RedMonk Programming Language Rankings (http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2017/03/17/language-rankings-1-17) :

1. JavaScript
2. Java
3. Python
4. PHP
5. C#
6. C++
...

What makes me sad with the above rankings, whether you trust them or not, is that I've actually used Python, Ruby and JavaScript in the past, and for the kind of file processing scripts and tools I develop, I can tell you that D is WAY better !!!

But almost nobody knows it.

And I don't think that the current website is effective at all in convincing people that D is indeed a better alternative to scripting languages like Python, Ruby or JavaScript, despite it really is.

> Just so you know the current design was set less than a year ago so while I'm in no position to say no change will happen this seems unlikely. But dlang.org is, like everything, open source so you could make a proposal.

Indeed...

On 06/23/2017 07:13 AM, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
>> I think you'll have to elaborate on that. How is python.org "obviously" targeted at inexperienced programmers and dlang.org isn't? The home pages look rather similar to me: menu, search box, code sample, sales pitch, those text boxes with icons, etc.
>>
>> What would you change on dlang.org? Completely overhaul everything, or just adjust the wording and other details to be more targeted at newbie programmers?
> 
> First, please notice how simple the landing page is.

python.org's home page looks about as crowded to me as dlang.org's. How is it significantly more simple?

> Its nice visual design exhibits simplicity, and obvioulsy uses a few text as possible to convey the message.

So you'd like to make dlang.org prettier and less wordy?

> I've recently studied web development for two years, and believe me, while not perfect, this landing page clearly matches many of the requirements we were taught.

Aside: Whenever someone says "believe me" that's a sign for me to be skeptical towards their claims.

How does dlang.org's home page not match the requirements you were taught?

My questions are not rhetorical. I'm trying to find out where you see problems and how you'd like to see them fixed.

[...]
> And look at the code snippets on the five slides of the carousel.
[...]
> These code snippets are very very simple !!! Almost baby code ;)
> 
> It seems pretty obvious to me that Python's code carousel targets beginner programmers, showing them simple code that they will easily understand.

So you'd like to see simpler code samples on dlang.org?

[...]
> And I don't think that the current website is effective at all in convincing people that D is indeed a better alternative to scripting languages like Python, Ruby or JavaScript, despite it really is.

You talked about how python.org is good, but what is bad on dlang.org? How does it fail where python.org succeeds, and how do we fix it?

> What would you change on dlang.org? Completely overhaul everything, or just adjust the wording and other details to be more targeted at newbie programmers?

IMHO, if dlang.org had more or less the same graphic design as python.org, the text blocks under the code carousel should be reduced to just what is required to convince people that D :

1. is a great scripting language, very simple to learn and even more productive than Python or JavaScript.
2. is a great programming language, delivering high performance applications with a better expressivity than C++.
3. is easy to download, install and get started.
4. has great documentations and a lot of tutorials, both for inexperienced and experienced programmers who want to quickly start developing scripts or GUI applications.

I know that when I carefully read the current dlang.org page, I can get this information.

It's just that I think that python.org is more effective at conveying their main messages with much less text.

For more details, you are invited to click on the links.

> You talked about how python.org is good, but what is bad on dlang.org? How does it fail where python.org succeeds, and how do we fix it?

On Linux Mint's software manager, about DMD, we can read :

"D is a systems programming language. Its focus is on combining the power and high performance of C and C++ with the programmer productivity of modern languages like Ruby and Python."

So I'm not saying that dlang.org is bad.

I'm just saying that :
1/ it's not especially obvious that D is also an easy to learn scripting language.
2/ I think that python.org's website is quite efficient at convincing people that it could be worth giving it a try.

But maybe dlang.org's current design is much better according to how you want it to be perceived.

On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 06:15:46 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
>> What would you change on dlang.org? Completely overhaul everything, or just adjust the wording and other details to be more targeted at newbie programmers?
>
> IMHO, if dlang.org had more or less the same graphic design as python.org, the text blocks under the code carousel should be reduced to just what is required to convince people that D :
> ...
> For more details, you are invited to click on the links.

Huh? You were asked about concrete action points that in your PoV would improve dlang.org. You can't just say "make it (like) python.org" ;-)
Could you maybe try to be a bit preciser and create a more detailed lists of points on how you would improve dlang.org?

> Huh? You were asked about concrete action points that in your PoV would improve dlang.org. You can't just say "make it (like) python.org" ;-)
> Could you maybe try to be a bit preciser and create a more detailed lists of points on how you would improve dlang.org?

Sorry I can't.

Make it look more like "python.org" is just and exactly what I mean.

For instance, D is the only scripting language I would use nowadays.

BUT I would not take the risk to use D instead of C++ to develop games for instance.

D is actually quite easy to sell a scripting language.

Convincing people to use D instead of C, C++, Java or C# is another thing.

In my personal case, selling D as a better alternative to Python, JavaScript or Ruby would have just needed a well chosen snippet of simple code, which shows me that indeed D is some kind of strongly-typed JavaScript, à la TypeScript, which is both easy to learn and use.

And I believe that "python.org" is currently more convincing for "low-profile" programmers/scripters than "dlang.org".

Just look at the code snippets...