First I'd like to say the Dlang-Tour is a very good idea.

Personally, *everytime* I push the "next" button I'm surprised there is *only* 1 example, while I'd expect at least 3 or 4 examples showing :
1. how to declare, use and print variables, including strings, slices and maps.
2. how to declare imperative functions
3. how to declare classes with attributes and methods
4. how to call functions and methods with the same dot notation, with or without parentheses

Anyway, that's not what I wanted to say in this post.

My point is that when you arrive to the further reading, you are invited to buy Ali's book :

"Basic resources

    New to programming? This book is a great starting place for beginners"

I've no problem with that, but would it be possible to consider adding also a link to this tutorial in the same paragraph ?

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/d_programming/

It's not because TutorialsPoint pay me, but because it may be one of the best D tutorials out there for both beginner D programmers.

And honestly, at the moment it's not really that easy to reach this tutorial from the dlang website.

First you have to push on "Tutorials", then in the middle of the page you see a boring flat grey icon with this text beside :

"D programming
Unknown
January 1, 2015
A nice introductory tutorial to D programming. Available on-line and in the PDF format.
Website"

The text is fine, but unfortunately the impersonal icon and text ("D programming") aren't that inviting...

If you don't want to put the link on the "Further reading page", maybe would you consider putting this nice tutorial for beginners just under the four official D books, before the more advanced readings ?

I guess many beginner D programmers will thank you :)

Because a few month ago I've been that beginner D programmer, and sadly I've completely missed this perfect tutorial. And I've just explained you why...

So why not supposing other programmers will have the same problem, and maybe miss it just like me ?

And btw, I actually consider this tutorial more like the fifth D book.

Because once you download the PDF, honestly it's quite close to a real printed book.

Hence my suggestion to put it AT LEAST under the four official books.

I know it's not perfect. It could be simpler at some places, and more complete here and there.

But it's quite good, easy to download, and maybe the best D book 0 dollars can buy you (unless you are kind enough and can afford to pay for it).

On 08/27/2017 12:26 AM, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
> My point is that when you arrive to the further reading, you are invited to buy Ali's book :

You can read Ali's book online for free.

[...]
> I've no problem with that, but would it be possible to consider adding also a link to this tutorial in the same paragraph ?
> 
> https://www.tutorialspoint.com/d_programming/

I'd vote against that. It seems poorly written.

* There are multiple grammatical errors in the first paragraph alone.
* The hello work example is repeated multiple times on the first pages, always with a pointless `args` parameter on `main`.
* The download links go to 2.064.2, which is several years old.
* The "first D program" has the line `writeln("test!");`. Its output is given as "test", missing the exclamation mark.

As far as I see, it's just not good.

On Saturday, 26 August 2017 at 22:26:00 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
> First I'd like to say the Dlang-Tour is a very good idea.
>
> Personally, *everytime* I push the "next" button I'm surprised there is *only* 1 example, while I'd expect at least 3 or 4 examples showing :
> 1. how to declare, use and print variables, including strings, slices and maps.
> 2. how to declare imperative functions
> 3. how to declare classes with attributes and methods
> 4. how to call functions and methods with the same dot notation, with or without parentheses
>
> Anyway, that's not what I wanted to say in this post.
>
> My point is that when you arrive to the further reading, you are invited to buy Ali's book :
>
> "Basic resources
>
>     New to programming? This book is a great starting place for beginners"
>
> I've no problem with that, but would it be possible to consider adding also a link to this tutorial in the same paragraph ?
>
> https://www.tutorialspoint.com/d_programming/
>
> It's not because TutorialsPoint pay me, but because it may be one of the best D tutorials out there for both beginner D programmers.
>
> And honestly, at the moment it's not really that easy to reach this tutorial from the dlang website.
>
> First you have to push on "Tutorials", then in the middle of the page you see a boring flat grey icon with this text beside :
>
> "D programming
> Unknown
> January 1, 2015
> A nice introductory tutorial to D programming. Available on-line and in the PDF format.
> Website"
>
> The text is fine, but unfortunately the impersonal icon and text ("D programming") aren't that inviting...
>
> If you don't want to put the link on the "Further reading page", maybe would you consider putting this nice tutorial for beginners just under the four official D books, before the more advanced readings ?
>
> I guess many beginner D programmers will thank you :)
>
> Because a few month ago I've been that beginner D programmer, and sadly I've completely missed this perfect tutorial. And I've just explained you why...
>
> So why not supposing other programmers will have the same problem, and maybe miss it just like me ?
The tutorial needs to cover advance topics such as manual memory management and the standard phobos library. It only scratchs the surface of the D programming language and it is not showing how powerful that D is, when it comes to the template programming when comparing to c++ template programming.

On Saturday, 26 August 2017 at 22:26:00 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
> I've no problem with that, but would it be possible to consider adding also a link to this tutorial in the same paragraph ?
>
> https://www.tutorialspoint.com/d_programming/
>
> It's not because TutorialsPoint pay me, but because it may be one of the best D tutorials out there for both beginner D programmers.
>
> And honestly, at the moment it's not really that easy to reach this tutorial from the dlang website.
>
> First you have to push on "Tutorials", then in the middle of the page you see a boring flat grey icon with this text beside :
>
> "D programming
> Unknown
> January 1, 2015
> A nice introductory tutorial to D programming. Available on-line and in the PDF format.
> Website"
>
> The text is fine, but unfortunately the impersonal icon and text ("D programming") aren't that inviting...
>
> If you don't want to put the link on the "Further reading page", maybe would you consider putting this nice tutorial for beginners just under the four official D books, before the more advanced readings ?
>
> I guess many beginner D programmers will thank you :)
>
> Because a few month ago I've been that beginner D programmer, and sadly I've completely missed this perfect tutorial. And I've just explained you why...
>
> So why not supposing other programmers will have the same problem, and maybe miss it just like me ?

No, i have the same issue with the website. Tutorialspoint may have issues as ag0aep6g pointed out but its very much to the point. I prefer to look up information on tutorialspoint compared to the D website.

Lets say Arrays:

* D website starts with Pointers, then Static Arrays, then Dynamic Arrays then ... A person may simply say: "I just want to know how to write a array, i do not need a tutorial talking about the different types, because most of my work is simply standard arrays".

Instead of splitting the information in different chapters, its so much text on a single page. Tutorialspoint simply shows the basic information and that is what i need 90% of the time.

How about Modules:

* D website starts with a big blog of texts Module, ModuleDeclaration DeclDefs DeclDefs. What am i reading. Chinese? By the time you see the visual text how to declare a module, you are already 2 pages down.

Tutorialspoint simply shows how to declare modules. Basic, fast ...


Tutorialspoint indeed misses a lot of information but D website has unreadable information overload. Useful for people who have time to read half a day but as somebody programming and wanting to quickly look up information. D website is not useful. Its actually counter intuative.

It feels academic in design, not functional. You expect to get simple example and the more advanced items under "advanced".

I have the same issue with the Library. The flow of information is bad, too much walls of text, with too much assumption that the programmer reading it is familiar with the more advanced features or programming knowledge. Links and references to variables that frankly, are unneeded. If it takes 15 minutes to know in std.parallelism that you can not get a thread ID in a simply way... then the purpose as a information source fails.

A simple:

https://dlang.org/phobos/std_datetime_date.html

Why do you need to wade past 2 pages for

jan
feb
mar
apr
may
jun
jul
aug
sep
oct
nov
dec
sun

mon
tue
wed
thu
fri
sat
...

Then the whole Jump to: 2, Jump to: 2, Jump to: 2 ...

Function naming...

Expect: bool validTimeUnits(string[] units...);

Gets: pure nothrow @safe bool validTimeUnits(string[] units...);

... Visual noise that is not important. Details like that need to be in a sub page.

People care about the function, parameter, return type. The rest is "advanced" and only useful under specific sitations.

After months i still do not use the library/documentation. I end up googling for examples or use tutorialspoint for some quick basic lookup's. If i am really stuck i may go into the library and get frustrated with the wall of text. Its is too much a time sink, while its supposed to be a help.

I do not know how to explain it but the documentation is at times more frustrating then the issue i am trying to solve. If i had to give a score, the D documentation is at best 4/10. Its not the lack of information but the simply bad presentation, overflow of information where you do not need it. No clear separation. Mobile friendly it is NOT. Even 4K friendly it also not. And plenty of other issues.

On Saturday, 26 August 2017 at 23:53:27 UTC, Ryion wrote:
> I have the same issue with the Library. The flow of information is bad, too much walls of text, with too much assumption that

Have you tried my alternative? It is the same content (well it lags a version or two cuz i haven't updated my computer yet) but laid out differently.

http://dpldocs.info/

http://dpldocs.info/experimental-docs/std.stdio.html
for example

On 08/27/2017 01:53 AM, Ryion wrote:
> * D website starts with a big blog of texts Module, ModuleDeclaration DeclDefs DeclDefs. What am i reading. Chinese?

You're reading the spec. Teaching is not the spec's first priority. It's not a tutorial or a programming textbook.

Have you tried Ali's book? The page on modules is here:

http://ddili.org/ders/d.en/modules.html

Wait a second. Large parts of that are word-for-word the same as on the tutorialspoint page [1]. Looks like one of the authors copied from the other one. From the bad impression I've got of tutorialspoint, I'd guess that they copied from Ali.


[1] https://www.tutorialspoint.com/d_programming/d_programming_modules.htm

> You're reading the spec. Teaching is not the spec's first priority. It's not a tutorial or a programming textbook.
>
> Have you tried Ali's book? The page on modules is here:
>
> http://ddili.org/ders/d.en/modules.html
>
> Wait a second. Large parts of that are word-for-word the same as on the tutorialspoint page [1]. Looks like one of the authors copied from the other one. From the bad impression I've got of tutorialspoint, I'd guess that they copied from Ali.
>
>
> [1] https://www.tutorialspoint.com/d_programming/d_programming_modules.htm

Ok I understand your point.

But sorry to repeat myself, but IMO, for D beginners, dlang.org is at best, a labyrinth, at worst, a complete mess.

Very honestly.

https://tour.dlang.org/

I'm still convinced that this page is tweaked to become the new main landing page.

"Welcome to D

What is D?

D is the culmination of decades of experience implementing compilers for many diverse languages and has a unique set of features:

    high level constructs for great modeling power
    high performance, compiled language
    static typing
    direct interface to the operating system API's and hardware
    blazingly fast compile-times
    memory-safe subset (SafeD)
    maintainable, easy to understand code
    gradual learning curve (C-like syntax, similar to Java and others)
    compatible with C application binary interface
    limited compatibility with C++ application binary interface
    multi-paradigm (imperative, structured, object oriented, generic, functional programming purity, and even assembly)
    built-in error detection (contracts, unittests)

... and many more {features}.

Take a tour

Want to try D online ? Simply click on the "run" button (or Ctrl-enter) below the example on the right to compile and run it. And the example can be freely edited if you want to experiment with D programming.

If you want to see other examples, click on the "next" button below to see the next example of the dlang-tour.

Further readings

* New to programming? Learn programming quickly and easily with the D language, using these freely downloadable books :

  * {http://ddili.org/ders/d.en/index.html}
  * {https://www.tutorialspoint.com/d_programming/}

* Already an experienced programmer? ...

etc"

Just add the 4 examples I suggested, and you have a brand-new beginner-friendly website without changing anything else to the website canvas.

On Sunday, 27 August 2017 at 11:26:58 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
>[...]
>
> Just add the 4 examples I suggested, and you have a brand-new beginner-friendly website without changing anything else to the website canvas.

If you want a change in D's web presence submit a PR to [1] or one of [2] as appropriate.

[1] https://github.com/dlang/dlang.org
[2] https://github.com/dlang-tour

And I'd like to point out that maybe I'm not the best web developer in the world, but what I suggest is quite close to what you can see on the website of very successful programming languages.

I'm only suggesting to have a SIMPLE and PRACTICAL landing page, which is also tailored for those who are completely NEW to D or even to programming, and just landed on this web page by CURIOSITY about the language.

If you succeed in convincing them that D is good for them, and that D can be easily installed and learned, then there are great chances they will become D programmers.

So basically my advice for the landing page is as simple as that :

1. Say "Welcome"

2. Show how D is nice, ending with a link to the feature page

3. Show how simple D code looks like, using 4 well chosen examples, with the first on the right of the main page.

4. Show how easy it is to learn D.

5. Show how easy it is to install DMD and a simple editor like CoEdit on any win/mac/linux computer.

That's all I suggest...