d from the outside

[john james]

Hello all

I am fairly new to programming (i'm a sophomore cs student in 
college), and I wanted to talk about d in a place where I might 
be heard... so here i am.

let me preface this comment by saying that the following 
statements are merely the opinions of someone who doesn't have as 
firm a grasp of computer programming as many of the veteran 
programmers who frequent this forum.

I recently became interested in d after performing a search of 
modern programming languages. I cut my teeth on programming using 
c++. Consequently I became quickly aware of the problems with the 
language and began to look for alternatives.

In the end I wound up looking at d and go. After a great deal of 
trepidation I ultimately choose go. Why you may ask?  Because Go 
worked.

In the beginning I wanted to use D. And after trying 
unsuccessfully many times to get it working on my machine (i am 
using a mac). I gave up and looked at Go.

Lo and Behold, Go worked the first time. I went on the site 
followed the instructions and it ran. No fuss, no muss.

I checked the forums before making the switch, and others had the 
same problem. I am a noob, I didn't understand the fixes, and 
despite my efforts i had to abandon the language.

This shouldn't be a reason for someone to miss out on a 
potentially great language and this is in my opinion what keeps D 
from being more popular.

I say this will all respect and admiration for the community and 
creators of the language.

Please get some clarity around the language. Simplify the use 
(installation / implementation). Yes I am asking for hand 
holding. I think it would go a long way in exposing more people 
to the language and gaining a base of new blood that are looking 
for great languages like D.

my particular problem was file object.d was not found when trying 
to compile my hello.d program. i followed the directions exactly 
as described on the installation portion of the site.

that's enough ranting. I just wanted to come forth and say that I 
really want to use the language, but if it is too difficult to 
get up and running (or requires too much overhead), then D runs 
the risk of alienating potential converts.

FYI:

I have installed other languages such as Go, and Haskell, PHP, 
etc and had no problem.