D as a college language

[Sjoerd Nijboer]

On Sunday, 6 May 2018 at 09:16:24 UTC, Marco de Wild wrote:
> If I have to conclude anything, it is that there, in my opinion 
> and in the context of my philosophy, should not be a one 
> language during a study. D definitely has a place in there with 
> how different language features are set up.
Defenately true. I learned some C at school, then some java, C# 
and broadened my scope of languages and programming styles from 
then on. Besides learning the languages, I the most important 
thing we were tought was to be language agnostic. While I can't 
say I completely am, I can carry over ideas from one language to 
another. I think that D is a useful language in this regard 
because it has a realistic, pragmatic and theoretically "correct" 
way of constructs you find in other languages while not limiting 
the user. I think that this is very important to teaching.

In contrast, when there were lectures about databases the main 
database the course focussed on was MySQL. Which is not 
neccesarily a bad choice as a teaching method. It's just that 
MySQL deviates from the standard more than for instance 
PostgreSQL. Therefore it was relatively difficult to learn 
databases and SQL and at the same time make the assignments for 
MySQL since there was a small translation step in the middle 
which had to be taken. Taking this step away could give a boost 
to learning and maybe a better understanding.

On Friday, 4 May 2018 at 15:14:55 UTC, bachmeier wrote:>
> One way that I could see D getting its foot in the door is an 
> intro course using Java or Python but where the instructor 
> wants to devote a couple of lectures to low-level programming 
> using pointers. D would be perfect for that due to the 
> convenient syntax. Other topics like metaprogramming or memory 
> management would also be reasons to use D.
Hmm sounds interesting. Maybe writing runtimes for relative 
simple languages in D as a course?

On Sunday, 6 May 2018 at 01:35:53 UTC, Seb wrote:
> @ everyone in this discussion: you ask and answer the wrong 
> question.
> The question needs to be:
>
> "What can we do or improve upon to allow D playing a bigger 
> role in education?"
More awarenes of D's existance for teachers?
How about fliers on schools, aimed at teachers?
Speakers at teacher conferences on conputer science?
Maybe a focus group of D teachers and help them out?

That, and actual quality free teaching material.