Getting started with D - Phobos documentation sucks

Mr. Anonymous mailnew4ster at gmail.com
Sat Sep 29 08:30:14 PDT 2012


Hi guys.

I was browsing the book "Programming in D" by Ali Çehreli. It 
was pretty much clear, and then I stumbled upon this on page 89:
> 20.9 Exercises
> 1. Browse the documentations of the std.string, std.array, 
> std.algorithm, and std.range modules.

OK, let's open the D website and browse the documentation of 
std.string:
http://dlang.org/phobos/std_string.html

What do we see? A bunch of links that look like SEO tags of a 
spam website, followed by a mess of anything - structs, classes, 
functions, and what not.
Do you really think somebody who learns programming can 
understand anything here?

Compare this with, e.g., an msdn reference:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms684852(v=vs.85).aspx
A clear division of enums, functions, macros, structs, ...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms684847(v=vs.85).aspx
The functions are divided by usage, with a short explanation next 
to each function.

I think documentation is really important, and something has to 
be done about it. How can a newcomer get started with D when he 
doesn't have a readable documentation of Phobos?


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