My first experience as a D Newbie

[codephantom]

On Wednesday, 18 October 2017 at 18:02:24 UTC, Ecstatic Coder 
wrote:
>
> But make the installation and learning curve as smooth as 
> possible for less-skilled developers, by allowing them to 
> download an all-in-one bundled installer 
> (compiler+ide+tutorials+examples), and they will be much more 
> to join the D community !
>
> Because you may think it's already the case, but you should 
> trust Rion and the others when they say it's not really the 
> case, especially on windows.

don't take my response too seriously...but...

The open-source community is mostly driven by 'volunteers'...who 
work on what they want to work on, when they have some spare time 
to work on it. I think too many people do not understand this, 
and so come in with bloated expectations.

Unlike commerical developers, the open source community rarely 
has the money or the resources for the 'all-in-one bundled' 
mindset. That's just how it is. That is the starting point for 
your expecations.

I blame commerical developers, like Microsoft/Apple, and 
universities especially!

They go out of their way to make the 'installation and learning 
curve as smooth as possible'..for beginners! And they are 
responsible for setting those kind of expectations up in peoples 
minds..at the 'beginning'! This is not the mindset you want when 
you enter the open source community...

I guess this is ok, if you're only every going to encounter 
commercial solutions when you go out into the real world...but 
the world has changed a lot..and you're actually more likely to 
encounter non-commercial, open source software these days.

So perhaps they should start teaching undergrad's how to setup an 
open-source operating system (preferably FreeBSD...Linux if you 
really have to..  ;-)

They should teach undergrad's to program in C/C++ (since 
open-source o/s's are written in these languages - though more C 
than C++)

They should teach undergrad's to program in a simple, plain text 
editor.

They should teach undergrad's to compile/debug from the command 
line/shell.

Instead, they teach C# on Windows, using VS.

open source, and D too, did not come about as a result of 
C#/Windows/VS users being disappointed with their language and/or 
tooling ;-)

So my recommendation for beginners, is [0..9]:

[0] - dump windows! (or at least dual boot, or setup a vm or 
something).
[1] - install FreeBSD (linux if you really have to ;-)
[2] - start writing some C/C++ code using Vi, and compiling from 
the shell prompt.
[3] - realise that there must be an easier way...
[4] - install KDE (hey..we don't want things to be too hard..do 
we).
[5] - dump C/C++ and install LLVM's D compiler => pkg install ldc
       (or install DMD: just download from the website and extract 
it)
[6] - open a 'more user friendly' text editor (like Kate).
[7] - start coding again, in D this time.
[8] - open a shell.
[9] - start compiling/debugging.

Then you *will* notice how much easier things are, and you won't 
be disappointed ;-)

And...you'll be better prepared to join the D community (or any 
other open source community for that matter).