reddit.com: first Chapter of TDPL available for free

[Daniel Keep]

language_fan wrote:
> 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.

It sounds good in theory, but it doesn't seem to hold up in practice.