This Week in D #15: hackathon, mem management, ARM, tip for C coders

[Rikki Cattermole via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On 4/05/2015 3:23 p.m., Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> I covered two weeks this time, as I missed last week.
>
> http://arsdnet.net/this-week-in-d/may-03.html
>
> The tip this week might be a bit controversial but I actually feel kinda
> strongly about this. So many times, I see people asking questions about
> how to do task X in D.
>
> I think that's the wrong question: you should just be asking how to do
> task X. The programming language isn't terribly important: if you can do
> it in C, you can do it in D basically the same way; D provides similar
> language features to other common languages like C and Java, so a LOT of
> knowledge carries over from them... as long as you aren't afraid to use it.
>
> I think that when people are new to D, we ought to press this carry-over
> point. They don't have to forget everything and suddenly do everything
> the D way, using only Phobos, doing it all with lazy ranges, etc. It
> doesn't have to be all that new, unfamiliar territory at once.
>
> Similarly, I get a bit bothered when I see a lot of work done to add a
> bit of common functionality to a C library. Now, don't get me wrong, I
> reinvent the wheel as much as the next guy (actually, I don't even like
> the term "reinventing the wheel" exactly because so much knowledge
> carries over. Just because I'm re-coding it doesn't mean I'm reinventing
> it. By carrying over knowledge of the problem domain from any source, it
> makes coding it again a lot easier - I already know what needs to be
> done and where the pitfalls are, unlike a truly novel invention, where
> all that is a mystery going into it. But I digress).
>
> I almost never use third party libraries personally for a variety of
> reasons, so I get the desire to rewrite things, especially when D offers
> so many ways to do it better than ever before.
>
> But at the same time, I'm  also a working programmer accustomed to
> things like last-minute client requests, deadlines, and other schedule
> constraints (including just simply not *wanting* to spend that kind of
> time on a problem, believe it or not, I don't actually care for
> programming all day every day....)
>
>
> In these cases, being able to say "yes we can, and I can do it today,
> though it might look like C" is so much more valuable than saying
> "maybe... if I figure out how to make it idiomatic D"
>
>
>
> So I guess it is more a peeve of mine than anything else, but I wanted
> to talk about it anyway and used the tip of the week as my vehicle. D
> code that looks like C isn't a bad thing, indeed, I think it is a
> selling point.

A pet peeve from the community section might be a great idea!