dmd & gdc

[H. S. Teoh]

On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 06:06:38PM +0100, xancorreu wrote:
[...]
> I note that gdc is completely free software but dmd runtime is not.

You mean free as in freedom, not as in price.


> An alternative is ldc, also free.

I looked up ldc recently, and it seems that it hasn't been updated for
years. Seems that gdc is the only other D compiler that's still actively
maintained. And from what I hear, its front end is essentially the same
as dmd.


[...]
> A painful is the lack of documentation: there is only API/Classes
> docs and few html pages. The books are non-free and there are not
> worth tutorials.

Andrei's book is worth the buy. It's not that expensive and it covers a
lot of very useful stuff.

As for docs and tutorials, why not contribute by writing more of them?


> I like D but definitively it makes me back!.
> Compare for example golang and D. Both relatively new languages (D is
> elder) and you have many more docs about golang than D. You have not a
> bunch of docs, docs you get with python or perl, but it's worthy
> amount.
[...]

It's because of the size of the community. The D community is relatively
small, but because google has such a wide exposure, golang has acquired
a large following in spite of its young age. Larger community == more
people writing tutorials, docs, howtos, etc..

So how to combat this? Write your own tutorials and docs. Contribute to
the community.


T

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