Fastest way to learn D?

[Chris]

On Tuesday, 15 October 2013 at 18:36:19 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
> On Tuesday, 15 October 2013 at 18:32:59 UTC, Craig Dillabaugh 
> wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 15 October 2013 at 18:25:48 UTC, Dejan Lekic wrote:
>>> On Tue, 15 Oct 2013 20:13:45 +0200, ProgrammingGhost wrote:
>>>
>>>> What is the fastest way for me to learn D? I think what I 
>>>> want is a
>>>> syntax reference manual and a good tutorial to learn how to 
>>>> find and use
>>>> libs.
>>>
>>> I learned D by doing two things.
>>>
>>> 1) Downloading the bundled DMD in a ZIP file.
>>>
>>> 2) Reading the language reference at http://www.dlang.org 
>>> (back then it
>>> was on DigitalMars website...)
>>>
>>> That is all you really need.
>>>
>>> Now I would suggest reading the D Wiki as well. ;)
>>
>> You really learned D from the online language reference?  
>> Thats hard core!  You must be much smarter than me.
>>
>> I suggested reading the Phobos docs online, but I was just 
>> joking.
>
> I did too. I don't see it as particularly 
> hard/only-for-smart-people, I just built simple programs and 
> slowly looked up what I needed as I went along. A lot of help 
> from people here and on IRC helped as well of course.

So did I, and then just at the right moment, TDPL was published, 
which explains the concepts of D and the reasoning behind them 
rather nicely, but it is not a "cookbook" or an elaborate "how 
to" guide. Ali's tutorial is much more practical as regards code 
examples, pointing out possible pitfalls and the like. As usual, 
you will need more than one book/source. Mind you, D is 
constantly evolving and things keep changing, so it's a good idea 
to stay on this forum and check the API regularly. If you do 
this, you will not only learn D, but also get a deeper 
understanding of programming related problems (and possible 
solutions) in general.

I don't know if there is a general overview of how D does things 
differently, e.g. that a lot of search, iteration and comparison 
algorithms are handled in std.algorithm (e.g. startsWith(), which 
would be in a string handling module in other languages).

Anyway, go ahead, you can only win!