Knowing the approach to solve a D challenge

[Jesse Phillips]

On Friday, 16 February 2018 at 09:44:27 UTC, aberba wrote:
> D has tone of features and library solutions. When you 
> encounter a problem, how do you approach solving it in code?
>
> 1. Do you first write it in idiomatic D style or a more general 
> approach before porting to idiomatic D?

Like always, it depends. Do I attribute up all my functions with 
const/@safe/nothrow... (is that even idiomatic) no. Do I build a 
range to process some data... sometimes. Do I utilize 
std.algorithm/std.range functions to process my data... when 
available.

Even my C# code tends to be more idiomatic D than others.

> 2. Do you find yourself mostly rolling out your own 
> implementation first before using a library function?

I don't know. If a rolled my own I probably don't know of the 
library function/function combination that does the same thing.

> 3. Do the use of generics come out of first try or a rewrite?

Usually not. If I don't have another use-case I probably don't 
know what needs
to be generic.

> 4. What rough percentage of phobos knowledge is required for 
> reasonable good problem solving efficiency?

I would guess average. The reason I say this because unlike 
popular languages search doesn't always provide a good example 
for every question so you kind of need to already know what 
you're looking for. It doesn't help that sometimes the answer is 
a combination of this (.reduce!max that isn't found in std.math)