Is D programming friendly for beginners?

[Lance Bachmeier]

On Tuesday, 12 March 2024 at 17:03:42 UTC, Mike Shah wrote:

> As a note, the 'which language is best for CS 1' debate has 
> long been debated -- but at least in a school setting, I've 
> found the quality/enthusiasm/encouragement of the teacher to be 
> the most important aspect regardless of language choice.

As someone that's been teaching beginners to program at a 
university for a long time (but not in a CS department) I've come 
to see the choice of language as largely unimportant. You have to 
decide what you want to teach them and then eliminate the 
languages that aren't suitable. D is one of many languages that 
would work with the right content. Other languages, like C++, add 
unnecessary overhead and thus should not be used.

It's often said "X is a complicated language" but that's the 
wrong way to look at it. You're teaching a set of programming 
concepts, not a language. The question is how well a particular 
language works for learning those concepts.