Please Vote: Exercises in TDPL?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Steve Teale wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote:
> 
>> A chunky fragment of TDPL will hit Rough Cuts soon enough. I'm pondering 
>> whether I should be adding exercises to the book. Some books have them, 
>> some don't.
>>
>> Pros: As I'm writing, I've come up with some pretty darn cool exercise 
>> ideas.
>>
>> Cons: The book gets larger, takes longer to write, and I never solved 
>> the exercises in the books I've read, but then I'm just weird.
>>
>> What do you think?
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Andrei
> 
> Andrei,
> 
> Do you have a publisher yet? They will probably give you quite a definitive answer. They usually have quite strong ideas about the market they are aiming for.

The publisher, Addison-Wesley, is leaving such details to me.

> If is is to be a university text book, then Yes!
> 
> I realize that doing it is a pain in the ass. You have to test every little thing to the limit, which takes forever. But if you do it you will sort out bugs in the book.
> 
> Don't envy you, especially given the moving target of D2 ;=)
> 
> But the best of luck.

Thanks! One nice thing is I've written (in D!) a little script that 
extracts the code from all of my examples, compiles it, and runs it 
comparing the output with the expected output. The book will definitely 
have a number of faults, but code that doesn't work will not be one of them.

It's amazing how much I need to rewrite in wake of recent improvements 
to D and Phobos. My initial draft of Chapter 1 used char[] for strings! 
I think D couldn't have claimed being much more than a step forward from 
C if it stayed with that approach to strings. There's still stuff that 
doesn't compile (Walter is working on that), and looking forward I'm so 
excited about the forgotten __traits(allMembers) and the reflection 
capabilities it begets, I can't stand myself.


Andrei