I'm Daniel Yokomiso.
Age: 23
Location: São Paulo, SP, Brazil

Quit college after 4 years of physics. Currently I'm a Java/J2EE/Project management techniques consultant.

I'm interested in language/library/ide design and implementation, developing my own oo functional language (eon).

I'm here trying to make D an efficient and safe language, with high-level constructs for repetitive tasks, but easy to understand. Someday in the future my language will provide a compiler generating D code, and this will be pretty easy to do. To make my job simpler I'm developing some libraries and tools in D, and perhaps someone else will find them interesting too. Also I want to share my studies here so we don't end up with some elegant but inefficient/awkard/unsafe construct because the consequences were unknown (but some obscure language had them). That's pretty much what I'm doing here.


"Russ Lewis" <spamhole-2001-07-16@deming-os.org> escreveu na mensagem news:3E709CF9.5D3082FF@deming-os.org...
> Jonathan Andrew wrote:
>
> > I'm Jon Andrew (pretty obvious!)
> > Age: 20
> > Location: Tucson AZ
>
> Cool!  I'm Russ Lewis.
> Age: 25
> Location: Tucson, AZ
>
> BS, Computer Engineering, U of Arizona
> Currently: Computer Programmer for IBM
>
> I'm interested in almost all things to do with computers.  My work is
currently on
> what we call "MidRange Storage," which means both file and block storage
(i.e. both
> NAS and SAN) in the midmarket (just below enterprise).
>
> However, personally, I love to work on far more than that and hope,
someday, to be
> working for IBM Research.
>
> > Went on to learn Visual Basic, C, and microcontroller assembly on things like PICs, currently trying to wrap up my degree in computer engineering
at
> > UofA, and avoid being brainwashed by the OOP-nazis in the CS department! I'm a student admin on some solaris and windows machines in the lab,
mostly
> > solaris though, which sadly cuts down on a lot of time I have to play
with D at
> > work, so I spend a lot of time lurking around here, trying not to
embarass
> > myself too badly.
>
> The lab in Gould-Simpson, then?  Or a different one?
>
> > I was helping out with the GCC front-end project for a while, but
unfortunately
> > the other guys working on the project got really busy, and my knowledge
about
> > compilers is too limited to really get much done by myself. I think its
a great
> > goal though, and I look forward to helping out again when things pick up
again.
>
> I wonder how hard it would be to port DLI to Solaris.  I haven't tried,
but it
> would be interesting...
>
> --
> The Villagers are Online! http://villagersonline.com
>
> .[ (the fox.(quick,brown)) jumped.over(the dog.lazy) ]
> .[ (a version.of(English).(precise.more)) is(possible) ]
> ?[ you want.to(help(develop(it))) ]


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.461 / Virus Database: 260 - Release Date: 10/3/2003

Okay. I hate speaking about myself, but since others do it as well...
So i have to confess. :)

Age: 20
Location: Munich, Germany.
Moved from Ukraine (that's one of Soviet Union splits, the second largest one) a few years ago.

I have just started studying Computer Science at a Technical University near Munich.

I can't say i have much experience. I have gotten a Speccy (a computer from 1982) as i was 8. That led to some BASIC programming. A few years later i have dropped that, in favor of music and fine arts. Which i also dropped a couple of years later, and try to learn now.

I came back to programming about 5 years ago. Since we had a large and powerful Pascal community in our city, the choice was pretty obvious: Delphi. I have tried to do some really large projects and mostly failed. It's not the language's fault though.

I also have a bit of experience in followong languages:
 - OCaml. Major language at our university. Interesting. It made me interest for language design in general.
 - Python. It's the scripting language used in Blender, a 3D application i'll be making a movie with. :)
 - C. I have joined a lame finnish demogroup. Tried to code in C, because i thought that this way someone might help me out... I was too naive. Though the code is clean, it doesn't work. :( My C knowledge seems to be superficial, or i simply can't concentrate on making no mistakes. ;( I might port it into D. Or switch to doing things i can do better - "art".

I also have a superficial impression of most other languages, including but not limited to .... [blah blah blah]

Right now i'm suffering a kind of blockade, i don't program even for myself, presumably since i tried to do something serious in C. However, i enjoy answering questions too much, and i end up firing up a compiler if i think i can track down someone's problem. I'm also an IRC and newsgroup addict. :) Well, maybe this blockade is for the best, since i have to take some more care of my health.

Except for that, i'm an arrogant arsehole and a paranoid android. I keep offending people at any occasion. Just make sure you ignore me if i do. ;) I'm also very easy to offend. [that's why i hate talking about myself!] Nontheless i hope to help the D community with some common sense and possibly someday code. I also think to make a language compiler of my own, enhancing ObjectPascal to what i need - in parallel with helping out with GCC D compiler, if i find some time. Either both or none of them. But my primary projects are currently the movie and planning the simple integer soundmachine compiler, much like CSound or Structural- Audio- Orchestra- Language, but an actually usable implementation.

-i.

Maybe I should also join the gang...
I'm 20, born, raised and living in Ecuador, right now in Quito. I'm a
university student, studying systems engineering (that'd be computing, I
dunno...). That's pretty much it.
I started with computers when I was 8 or so when my dad taught me Basic.
After like 4 years, I started with QBasic, and that was my first encounter
with structural programming. Then, it was VB time. Two and a half years ago
I started to learn C, and then C++. Last year it was learning like crazy: I
had to learn Delphi, Java, HTML, JScript... And I met D. Well, I never
learnt JScript that well, but I think it counts.
I never liked Windows 3.1, so I learnt DOS the hard way. That's why I like
to open command prompts like crazy, and that's why I like Linux so much. But
I still don't have that many things in Linux to be with it too long. Besides
Windows (3.1, 95, nt 4, 98, me, 2000, xp) and Linux (mandrake 8,9), I don't
have experience with other OS.
I know I don't know tons of things, that's why I often get lost with many
things you say, but I'm always willing to learn. That's the good thing: I
don't know any of my classmates who want to know more. They just want to
finish their career and then get a job that pays good enough. That's it. I
don't think that's a good idea, but I can't fight them.

————————————————————————— Carlos Santander


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.462 / Virus Database: 261 - Release Date: 2003-03-13

Hi, I'm Antti Sykäri.

Age: 23

Location: Finland

I'm studying computer science at Helsinki University of Technology. Also working as a coder more or less part-time (or, currently, nearly full time) at Housemarque, a local game company.

Some background: along the years I've programmed in several languages, starting from Basic on C-64 and Amiga, a little MC68000 assembly, C, Java, some Python and then Scheme (our first programming course is held along the lines of the famous "Structure of Interpretation of Computer Programs", which obviously affected my thinking to some amount).  I think that I seriously decided to learn programming when I participated in a game programming training at the aforementioned company a couple of years ago. That's also when I learned C++, which has so far been the language of my choice. Since then I've switched to "Learning mode" and spent most of my free time reading books about programming, programming languages, methodologies, and what-you-have. Currently I'm reading about different computation models (the Mozart/Oz book), generative programming and metaprogramming (in C++), psychology of programming, object-oriented software construction (à la Eiffel), and Unix internals.

Unfortunately, combining all this with studies and working doesn't leave me much free time for projects of my own. (And I still have a strong feeling that I *should* learn serious functional programming, logic programming, Common Lisp, and a bunch of other things ...)

Like every other C++ programmer, I've wanted to design a language of my own to make a more accessible, more powerful and safer language. Accidentally, this is what lead me to learn about D, which seems to be the nearest best thing one could imagine at that direction. So I've been around, occasionally opening my big mouth.

My computing environment preferences lie on the Unix/Linux side, and I'm naturally looking forward to seeing a full-blown D compiler for Linux.

-Antti

Ok I'll pitch in my story...

I'm 29, and I'm a game developer. I've been doing the games thing for about 7 years now, so I think I'm stuck with it for awhile. I started programming on the the Apple II in basic and proceeded to learn C64 basic, IBM PC microsoft basic, PC assembly language, then a little C.  Through college I did Scheme, C++, and a little Prolog.

After college it was straight C++ with some assembly required ;) for a long time. I dabbled in Java a little here and there, but mostly stuck close to C++.

At my job we use a Lisp hosted development environment with a custom language and compiler. Our language is an odd hybrid of C, C++, and MIPS assembly dressed up like Lisp, with some useful Lisp features like macros and automatic memory management thrown in. And yes, we're a "real" developer; we're 1st party and we have 45 people working fulltime on the current project.

We do Playstation 2 development so we have need for lots of direct-to-hardware programming; a significant portion of our codebase looks like driver code. We also are developing an enormous game world with lots of interesting characters so we need high level expressivity as well.  Our language bridges the gap fairly well, but there is certainly room for improvement.

So that is why I'm interested in D. I see a need for a language than can be more expressive than C++ without sacrificing the efficiency (or at least the opportunity for effiency).

Dan

(Well, I started by considering this very thread a bit weird, as people rarely introduce themselves in forums like newsgroups or mailing lists, but now, here I go like "me too"... Umm...)

So, I'm 33, programming for 18 years (started with some BASIC and Z80 assembly, then C64's 6510, then Pascal, C, C++, some Java, Tcl, TN-SDL, some Eiffel, Ruby, Lua and dunnowhat, uhh, of course, xBASE, and even JAM 4GL for a few weeks, but please don't tell anyone...). I'm also a game developer at heart, but have no time and money to actually do what I'm here for...

I have a sick tendency to inadvertently stress languages
to their limits, bringing them to knees before they could
prove me that they are the ones to love... I always seem
to try solving my stupid problems in obscure, unusual ways
(mostly due to lack of patience and proper knowledge of all
the available language features), which makes me probably the
most "war-ridden" but still most inefficient programmer on
this planet, constantly dreaming of "a better language" that
would suddenly match my mindset and style... (As I seem to
be reluctant to match my mind to the available languages.)

One advantage(?) of this constant struggle is that I tend to learn things the hard way, and see more of the "hidden stuff" than some of the "luckier" programmers do. (One such example may be when, during a heavy C++ project 8 years ago the concept of DbC struck me like a revelation, 2 years before I heared of Bertrand Meyer or Eiffel at all, so I can't understand why people find DbC such a big deal and/or why Mr. Meier takes all the credit instead of me... :) ).

I'm wandering around D now (which I start liking better
for this second try), and also OCaML and LISP, languages
that have somehow managed to dodge my offenses so far...

Cheers,
The Luna Kid
(a.k.a Szabolcs Szász - but ya don't wanna learn a name
like that, do ya?...)

"Luna Kid" <lunakid@neuropolis.org> wrote in message news:b563m7$2u5r$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> (Well, I started by considering this very thread a bit weird, as people rarely introduce themselves in forums like newsgroups or mailing lists, but now, here I go like "me too"... Umm...)

Heh, heh, got you too, did it.  Well, yes it is a bit weird for newsgroups, I guess, considering anonymity seems to be a  key thing in lists.  But I figured it would be slightly different for this group.  For one, it's on it's own server; and for two, most of the people here seem to supply their real names.  That in itself is unusual for a newsgroup.  So my conclusion was that we have a lot of sincere, earnest individuals here that want to make something of D.  I figured these same people might not mind revealing their background which might prove interesting and useful to the list.

So I admit it. I'm guilty.  I started this topic.  :-)
> I'm wandering around D now (which I start liking better
> for this second try), and also OCaML and LISP, languages
> that have somehow managed to dodge my offenses so far...

Interesting to see that a number of people have made references to the functional language OCaML.  It seems this paradigm has piqued the the interests of some industry types after all.  I tried this language off and on over last couple years.  I never got very far into it, but it certainly seemed impressive.  I'm very interested in the functional paradigm, but, like others, have found it confoundingly different from the way imperitive programming languages work. I will stick to spreadsheets for the time being :-).  Another language that supposed to be good is Concurrent Clean.

Thanks for contributing that, "Luna Kid", despite this being a weird topic :-).

Later,

John

Name: Jon Allen (duh)
Age: 23
Location: Minot, North Dakota
Occupation: undergrad student (double majoring in math and computer science)

I remember the first "program" I ever wrote was a little game on the Apple IIc involving a string of characters that tested reflexes when the space bar was held down :-).  This was probably in the first or second grade.  I was immensely proud of this feat and showed it off to everyone I knew.  Someone I showed apparently saw some potential there and gave me a book on Applesoft Basic.  Ever since I've been hooked on programming.  I soon felt cramped by Basic and began to dabble in Pascal, but never became very proficient in it because discovered machine language (6502) and started to supplement my Basic code with it (remember peek and poke?  <shudder>).  Before long I was writing programs in pure machine language.

When my parents divorced I no longer had a computer in the house, but I managed to feed my addiction with graphing calculators.  My first was a Casio, but that wasn't quite powerful enough for me.  When I was fourteen I got a summer job and bought a TI-85 calculator.  TI-Basic wasn't quite fast enough for me though, so I learned Z80 assembly (thank god for calc to mac link cables at my school, otherwise I never would have been able to do that).  When I was seventeen I got a decently paying job as a computer tech and used the money to buy an old 486 from one of my friends.  I set out to learn C++, and bought Visual C++ 4.  For some reason I had a devil of a time with C's syntax, so I didn't really get too far with the language before I was introduced to Visual Basic.  VB was pretty neat, and so much easier to use than the Win32 api.  Fortunately it wasn't very long before I began to feel extremely cramped by the language.  Mostly I wasn't working with the language but using frustrating workarounds to make api calls anyhow.  I started using Visual C++ to write activex backend's for my programs. Then I needed better setup programs than what was provided with VB, so I started writing those in C++ too.  By now I was good enough with C++ that there was no reason to use VB anymore.  This was probably about the time I graduated high-school.

Ever since C++ has been my language of choice, mostly because I haven't put in the time to learn anything else.

Right now I'm learning x86 assembly, which, as it turns out, is pretty easy. Other languages I want to learn whenever I get time is Lisp and Delphi.

When I graduated high school I was the best programmer I knew and didn't think there was much I could learn from anybody else.  Now I'm a *much* better programmer than I was then, and fortunately I also realized that there are actually people who are way better than I am (lots of them even :-). So last year I finally decided that maybe I could learn something from college and decided to go back to school.  I currently work as an ASP "developer" (now I know that I really hate VB) for the school.  Every once in a while they let me at some "real" work.  The most recent program I wrote for work was a little port testing thingie designed to test firewalls for compatibility with some of the software they use (not particularly challenging, but still fun to write).

For the future I'm leaning towards a career as a professor.

Current project's I want to start on when I get time are:
a decent programmers editor (none of them get it quite right for my taste)
a language of my own design
my own C and D compilers

project's I want to finish before I die:
my own custom os
a decent AI

23, amateur programmer, little bit of contract work five years ago. Self-taught, high school drop-out.  Started C when I was twelve (BASICA earlier, but like Milhouse, that doesn't count) but don't consider myself to have become a C programmer until I was sixteen.

I've picked up an eclectic repertoire of languages since then, but I'd
kept coming back to C because I've little patience for dealing with slow
or bulky languages.  The last language I was in with before D was
Python, with whom I had one of those breakups where it takes a lot of
retrospect to realise how bad the relationship was.

John, you must be careful what you wish for!! Here goes:

Age: 34

Country:
  Australia (I'm English, though, a Yorshireman in fact, with all that goes
along with that ...)

Studies:
  First degree in Information Technology (Software Development) in 1992
  PhD in "Photonic Packet Switching Networks" (don't ask!!) in 1995,
including inventing a fully-programmable bursty traffic generating algorithm
(please don't ask how it works, as I can no longer remember)

  For all that I have a good academic record, I am almost a pure picture
thinker, so am stunningly bad at learning. Books are hard to impossible to
digest, acronyms do nothing but confuse, jargon leaves me feeling totally
stupid (recently someone was talking about call-tail optimisation - how do
people remember all these terms?), and I was a total pain to all my teachers
over my 22 years of school as I'd make them explain *everything*! But I
think I'm like lots of programmers, though, in that I can get things in a
snap given just one good simple example. I hope you'll continue to pardon
all my dumb questions, and know that you're helping a confused soul find
some order in his thinking.

S/E background:
  Played around with electronics and computers as a kid - assembly
programming Vic20 & ZX81, building extra memory boards, etc. - but forgot
about all that kind of stuff once I hit 15 and discovered girls, booze and
music.
  Although my PhD work (92-95) was primarily software based - in C++ - I
count my education in programming as beginning in 1995 when I was thrust
into working on embedded ISDN systems, working for a company with 13
products over 4 different platforms. This work included debugging primary
rate ISDN LAN Access Servers, running 127 concurrent tasks, in assembler in
real-time. Looking back, I'm always surprised that I didn't run back to
academia. Also, in this job I got my first taste of Windows and the first
taste of the unpleasant side of the personality-type that is "Programmer". I
had the temerity to ask the one Windows developer in the company about how
one goes about writing GUIs and such, and his response was "It took me two
years to learn how to do this stuff, so you can f--k off". 4 months later I
had his job, and have amassed a modest amount of Windows programming
knowledge since then. This experience was actually very positive, since it
demonstrates that nothing in computing is as hard as you think (though it
always seems so at first), and that people who hoard information in this
game do not profit (not to mention not having any friends).
  Moved to Australia in the beginning of 1997, and got married to an Aussie
later that year. Mrs Fox is utterly ignorant of all things computer, and
quite determined to stay that way. She says she's busy enough raising three
hungry boys, but I point out we've only got two sons ... ?!?
  A few largely unremarkable permanent and contract roles under my belt, I
co-architected (is that a verb) and implemented the back-end to the
Commonwealth Securities online trading site - the busiest transactional
website in the southern hemisphere, apparently - with lots of COM and
custom-marshalling and all that jazz. That stuff's run since mid-1999
without having a single failure (a source of pride) or requiring any
updating (a source of penury).
 Next role involved co-writing an address parsing infrastructure for the
Australian arm for the world's largest marketing database company (based in
the US). In an early exchange with the head software group, based in the US,
myself and the local development leader - also English, but a southerner ...
;) - were told that the US team didn't expect us to be able to create an
Australian version that would run with any efficiency, and just to try our
best. Three weeks later we had designed and implemented a pluggable
architecture and parsing plug-ins which performed quite well, despite our
paucity of skills. It performs more than 20 times as quickly as the
original, and had a parsing match rate of >99.9 (versus ~98% for the
original), and can be readily customised to other countries, addressing
systems, etc. etc. It is now the company's standard architecture.
 In 2001, I worked for the least well-organised company one could possibly
ever imagine. This company had managed to get the contract for internet
banking for one of this country's top banks, and then proceeded to employ a
ridiculous number of uni grads, imported labour, and about 30 "consultants"
from one-of-the-big-five (I couldn't tell you which one, but it has a funny
name) to write the thing. In other words, the many monkeys approach.
Needless to say, this did not work. After 18 months of "work" they were
barely any closer to meeting the original 6 month deadline, and decided to
hire in some experienced contractors to see if they could actually deliver.
I was one of these unfortunate souls, and served as "Software Quality
Manager"; my job was basically to teach them all - from junior to their
"architect" - how to program in Java. Within the first week, half the
contractors left, declaring that they refused to work with such poor
management, intransigent and unskilled developers, lazy support people (man,
I could tell you some stories that'd make your hair curl !!), etc. etc.
Being a stubborn soul, I decided to carry on. Six months later, we had
managed to get the build time down from 4 man days to 40 minutes, get system
logon time from 3 minutes to 4 seconds, and allow 2000 concurrent users
where previously more than 8 had caused the (exceedingly high-powered
multi-processor, massive memory UNIX) server farm down. However, it is the
first (and hopefully last) job where I've had to shout at people, multiple
times a day; where I've worked with people who didn't compile, never mind
test, their code before checking it in, even when told EVERY morning, by
management to do so; where a $200-an-hour consultant (from that big-five
consultancy with the funny name), flown in from Melbourne each Monday and
put up in one of the best hotels in Sydney, deliberately checked in
something syntactically correct but with some shocking semantic problems on
what he thought was his penultimate day because he was leaving, couldn't be
bothered to fix it, didn't want to admit to the enormity of his
incompetence, and wasn't aware that the client's management had decided that
he was doing such a good job that they would bring him back 6 weeks later!
The client's company had won awards world wide in the previous 3-4 years,
but didn't sniff the wind of dot-bomb change, and saw their share price drop
from $600 to $0.12. Though we got the product past the delivery, the bank
was quite aware of what was going on, and it has subsequently been entirely
rewritten by the bank's internal development team. Ridiculously, had the
company done this project successfully, they had all the other banks in Oz
sniffing round, so would have totally cleaned up. Kind of makes you smile, I
guess.
 Since then, I've had other small contracts, including being a COM "expert"
(terrible word - who's really an expert, when it comes down to it?) for a
couple of clients, including a gaming company, and one of a former friend,
who decided to employ me for a substantial amount of work but decided not to
pay me. Cute.

Current efforts:
  Because of the financial impact of the non-paying experience, I had time
and impetus to start to write, and at the beginning of 2002, put out
proposals to a couple of magazines. That's all gone really well - far better
than I expected - and I've had over 30 articles accepted and published for
Windows Developer Magazine and C/C++ User's Journal. It's kind of a cool
irony that I have so much stuff published by WDM; I'm spreading Windows
programming knowledge that I may never have acquired had not my friendly
former co-worker been so "helpful" and spurred me on.
  As well as the article stuff, I'm also writing a book on advanced C++, and
have another couple of book ideas on the boil. Anyone who's had anything to
with writing a book knows just how hard and how long this is, so please
nobody email me asking me when it'll be out; it'll likely not be at least
until first quarter 2004.
  I decided to take a few months off from last September for the writing,
and my non-paying projects (see below), but am currently looking around for
work. However, the job market here is absolutely dead (not that it's vibrant
anywhere). Hence I'm doing bits and bobs for one or two overseas clients -
not that I couldn't use more, if anyone's interested :) - but mainly
focusing on the writing (which doesn't pay v. well, so don't give up your
day jobs, chaps).

Projects:
  STLSoft (http://stlsoft.org/) - a lightweight, cross-platform, C++
template library, and its various technology-oriented sub-projects, COMSTL
(http://comstl.org/), WinSTL (http://winstl.org/), MFCSTL
(http://mfcstl.org/), UNIXSTL (http://unixstl.org/), etc. This all grew out
of my writing an STL-compliant sequence interface over the Win32 FindFile
API (see "Adapting Windows Enumeration Models to STL Iterator Concepts"
http://www.windevnet.com/documents/win0303a/). The whole point of all
STLSoft libraries are to be efficient and lightweight, so they are 100%
header-only, and work with Borland 5.5+, Comeau 4.3.1+, Digital Mars 8.26+,
GCC 2.95+, Intel 6.0+, Metrowerks CodeWarrior 7.0+, Visual C++ 4.2+ and
Watcom 11.0+ compilers, without needing to configure/compile anything, yada
yada. They even discriminate DMC++'s dimishing failures in the namespace
support area, so work with version 8.26 onwards.
  ShellExt.com (http://shellext.com/) - just a place where I make available
various shell extensions that I've written over the years. They always seem
remarkably prosaic to me, but I've had lots of emails from people telling me
my shell extensions have saved them from masses of manual effort. (They also
suggest I should charge for them, but I think that's more than a little
tight.) Please visit and tell me what you think, or make requests for new
ones: I've got a nice friendly wizard, so it doesn't take me much effort to
write new ones.
  CRunTiny - in concert with another WDM regular, Eugene Gershnik, we are
attempting to provide a very lightweight, but (largely) fully-functional
(exceptions, statics, etc. etc.) C-runtime library, initially for Visual C++
(5, 6, 7) and Intel (6, 7), but we'd like to expand it to other compilers,
perhaps even Digital Mars eventually.
  TemplateD (http://templated.org) - just started this, so not done anything
yet, but plan to make a D-equivalent to the various STLSoft projects. I'd
also like to do a D equivalent to ATL, so that COM objects in D is a breeze.
  DProgramming (http://dprogramming.org/) - same deal, but to do with
non-template stuff. Just started, but plan to populate this project with
anything I can't swing Walter into accepting into Phobos. :)
  "The D Journal" (http://thedjournal.com) - started this last year, but
there was too little interest on the news group (although a number of people
did volunteer). Walter and I still have high hopes of resurrecting this, and
I have medium-term ambitions of it being a fully-fledged magazine - akin to
WDM, C/C++ User's Journal, DDJ, etc. - once D itself has matured and
broadened. I hope later this year we may be able to get it going, although
it will likely mean that a few people will have to contribute a
dis-proportionate amount of material in the early stages.

  There're a few other things I'm messing around with from time to time, but
nothing that's likely to see the real-word any time soon, so I'll shut up
about all that now.


Well I'm sure you've all heard more than enough from me. I'd just like to say what a continuing pleasure the Digital Mars newsgroup is, and what a stark contrast it is from most of the others I've come across in terms of tolerance, helpfulness, and plain good humoured human friendship. We not only have the foremost compiler walter in the business, but he's managed to engender a forum that contains most of what is good, and precious little of what is bad, in our business. Thanks to you all.



"John Reimer" <jjreimer@telus.net> wrote in message news:b4op1e$2pbu$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Since I'm fairly new to this list and I've already posted a couple of
items,
> I figured it would be it might be couteous to introduce myself a little. I'm hoping this might encourage others to do the same.  It might give readers an idea of the people involved in this list, their backgrounds,
and
> the influence their ideas may have on the D language.  I know who Walter
is,
> of course :-).
>
> From what I can see, there are  people from both academica and industry involved here.  Perhaps quite a few novices to programming/computer
science
> also exist.  Historically, I believe, academia and industry have been somewhat at odds as to what programming methods/languages are used for
best
> practice in various situations.  An example perhaps would be academia's strong support for functional languages, and industry programmer's general repugnance of those languages types.  It would be useful therefore to see the backgrounds of people on this list, not to start a war, but to see the influences and interest.  My involvement is quite benign as I don't
classify
> as either of these groups.  Walter, it seems, would classify as an
industry
> level language designer, who seems to implement language features that are from the a very practical experience point of view.  Naturally, a lot of ideas are shared by both groups.
>
> My introduciton:
>
> Age:      27
>
> Occupation:
>     Paramedic (believe it or not; and don't really know how it happened
:-)
>
> Country:
>     Canada
>
> Studies:
>     Part time student in Electronics Engineering degree program
>     1 year of computer science (which amounts to not much I'm afraid)
>
> Background:
>
> I've been interested in computers and languages probably for 12 years, programming off and on during that time. Initially learning BASIC and 6502 assembler on the C64 at 15,  I went on to study and use C at the age of 17 and programmed several "small" projects and libraries.  I'm certainly far from obtaining any "expert" level of knowledge or experience despite that amount of time (since it has never been a profession for me).  Nonetheless I've studied independently several languages, including several in the imperative, functional, and OO language paradigms.  I'm currently enjoying applying programming ideas to electronics circuit design and analysis, albeit at a fairly trivial level.  I also enjoy math and its application
in
> computer languages.  Add to that a dream to learn compiler and OS design
> techniques, with a touch of 3D graphics :-) (dream on).
>
> If anyone is brave enough as I am to offer some sort of introductory
piece,
> I think many would appreciate it and find it interesting.  There appears
to
> be a lot of bright minds on here with experience enough to easily render mine embarassing :-).
>
> Thanks,
>
> John
>
>