reddit.com: first Chapter of TDPL available for free

[language_fan]

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:04:50 +1000, Daniel Keep thusly wrote:

> I'm personally of the mindset that beginners should most definitely not
> be attempting to learn D as their first language.  Languages like D, C,
> C++ are horribly unsuitable because they force you to understand how the
> machine works before you can learn to program; except that they force
> you to learn to program in order to understand how the machine works.

One way to teach languages with both high and low level concepts is to 
start bottom-up. Surely the high level concepts are usually built from 
atomic low level artifacts. This would even be a good design method for 
the whole language. It's much easier to reason about the language if the 
core is kept simple. It's also a practical way to organize your thoughts 
by separating the semantics from the syntax and seeing its composite 
nature.