Introducing Myself

Clay Smith clay.smith.r at gmail.com
Wed Nov 4 16:20:54 PST 2009


Travis Boucher wrote:
> I guess I should introduce myself.
> 
> Hi, I'm Travis, and I am a code-a-holic and general purpose unix geek.
> 
> I heard about D a long time ago, but never took a good look at it.  A 
> few weeks ago a friend of mine suggested I look at D when I was brushing 
> up on some more advanced uses of C++ (I was mostly brushing up on STL 
> and template usage in general).
> 
> I love studying different programming languages, semantics, syntax and 
> implementation.  I also love some of the different paradigms, and seeing 
> how they work.
> 
> Now I am not some coding expert, I wouldn't even call myself a good 
> programmer.  I can get stuff done when I need, but its usually messy, 
> ugly, "works for me", "code is meant to be run, not read (ie. PERL)" 
> sort of crap.
> 
> The one thing that frustrates me about the direction of programming in 
> general is how high level and bloated it is getting, and how alot of 
> programmers I have come across are fine with that.  Abstraction upon 
> abstraction upon abstraction, turning something as simple as 1 + 1 into 
> an operation that goes through layers upon layers of code until the 
> machine finally says "2", then back up the abstraction chain until you 
> get a value that may or may not be 2.  Turning a 1 tick operation of 2-4 
> bytes into a 100+ tick operation of 100+ bytes.  (ok, I may be 
> exaggerating a bit on the numbers but you get the point).
> 
> Don't get me wrong, I love a language that allows me to make 1 + 1 = 3 
> if I want it to, but I don't think it should require massive amounts of 
> memory or CPU time to do it.
> 
> In comes D.
> 
> D lets me code like I am coding in a scripting language, but executes 
> like I am coding in C/C++.  It has taken the best parts of all languages 
> and put them into one pretty package.  Ok, the implementations are still 
> less mature then I'd like, but they are getting better.  The language 
> lets me ignore issues I don't care about (like memory management), and 
> moves out of the way on issues I do care about (like memory management).
> 
> I could go on forever on what I love about D, conditional compiling, 
> delegates, templates (especially the syntax), but most people on this 
> newsgroup probably feel the same.
> 
> Anyway, since I don't have that many geek friends capable of 
> understanding the merits of D, or sharing my excitement of new features 
> I learn to use, I turn to this newsgroup.
> 
> A little about me (thats what an introduction is for anyway, isn't it?)
> 
> I have mostly worked on systems administration tasks.  Programming is 
> more of a hobby that has applied uses in systems administration.
> 
> The past few years I've focused mostly on large scale web clustering, 
> both high transaction and high throughput.
> 
> Recently I started teaching myself a bit about the 3d world world (no, 
> that double world is not a typo).  Learned Blender (and Python by 
> association).  Been poking around 3D engines for a few years including 
> Ogre and Irrlicht.
> 
> Have done a bit with embedded stuff, including micro controllers (just 
> AMR, and mostly in emulators as my hands as not steady enough anymore to 
> do much electronics, too much caffine) and nintendo DS (devkitpro).
> 
> I use open source software almost exclusively.  I have a couple windows 
> boxes around just to keep myself up to date on the new stuff microsoft 
> is doing.  I don't do OSX, but I'd love to.
> 
> I use Linux (mostly ubuntu these days, but started with Slackware back 
> in the 2.0 kernel days), and BSDs (mostly FreeBSD, but OpenBSD and 
> NetBSD a bit as well).  I like different architectures, and trying to 
> get a unix of some sort running on them (I have MIPS, ARM, Alpha, Sparc, 
> x86, and x86_64 machines in one form or another).
> 
> I love learning new things, and D is the most exciting thing I have 
> gotten into the past 5 years.  I hope to become part of the community in 
> some way or another.
> 
> 

Hello Travis,

Welcome aboard the D train.

Let's see...
dsource.org
planet.dsource.org
dsource.org/projects/descent
dsource.org/projects/dsss
http://wiki.team0xf.com/index.php?n=Tools.XfBuild
http://dsource.org/projects/ldc
http://dsource.org/projects/tango

Hope these links can make you more productive with D.

Good luck, other D friends are sure to give you advice as well.



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