This sucks

zeka · Joined: 23 Mar 2007 Posts: 6

I have never seen such unfriendly environment like everything that surrounds D. I had no issues picking up Ruby or Python and other languages/libs in the past. Using primarily online forums and short docs. Online communities are usually friendly and often demonstrate some sort of collective will to BE HELPFUL.

I have been trying to get GTK+ (for D) installed and compiled on my box and do my "hello world" in it for a whole freaking evening. The damn thing does not even have a name that everybody agrees on. Is it GTKD? Or UID? How many ZIP files with cryptic names I have to download and unzip to compile and run? And WHERE should I unzip them?

Some guys tried to provide "tutorials" that are usually like... 4 (four!) lines big. Try following your tutorials on a clean XP box, dudes. I do realize that most of us are programmers, not documentation people, but I am not surprised that D is not picking up: apparently it is impossible to have 100MB archive that can be unzipped into D:\ and everything runs from there.

Even DMD's own website is weird. Why the hell there are TWO zip files? DMD and DMC? With somewhat duplicated directory structures and identically named files with different sizes? How freakin dedicated I must be to keep trying not to lose interest?

What a pity. The language sounds like dream come true but I just can't see how can it be useful because, as it seems, D+libraries package I've been looking for apparently is spread across bizillion obscure zip files hosted by bizillion little websites and only a handful of people know how to put this mess together and they're too smart and too busy to waste their time to put that collective wisdom in a document.

When they do, I will promise to contribute and create a web site promoting D which is actually normal and I will have an installer (or even a single ZIP file) for Windows that allows newcomers to play with a goddamn thing.

zeka · Joined: 23 Mar 2007 Posts: 6

Even this forum is a joke. Why its creators and maintainers are so paranoid that they require stupid accounts? Will anonymous guests hurt anybody? Do you REALLY have so much traffic that you should be worried about bots posting porn links?

And even when you do try to open an account (most people simply leave and never try to learn D again) you slap visitors in the face by that ridiculous sign up form with apple images and capchas.

Are you really that popular to afford scaring few precious visitors away? How old are you folks?

miasma · Joined: 08 Feb 2007 Posts: 13

clayasaurus · Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 857

http://www.d-riven.com/ might help you too. Getting yourself set-up with D is the hardest part, but once you know that, it's easy.

Auria · Joined: 29 May 2006 Posts: 44

Hi,

your exeprience is understandable, but you have to understand D is much younger than Ruby and Python, and this GTK binding is still Alpha i think.

If you use alpha stuff you need to expect everything won't be smooth

I think D is a really great language, but it needs a bit more time.

The language has gone 1.0 not so long ago. Now that the language is stabilized, it's the turn of lib and IDE makers.

After then will D be easy to use for everyone

Ant · Joined: 06 Mar 2004 Posts: 306 Location: Canada

jcc7 · Joined: 22 Feb 2004 Posts: 657 Location: Muskogee, OK, USA

zeka · Joined: 23 Mar 2007 Posts: 6

Thank you for all your replies. Also I must apologize for somewhat harsh post, it was one of those evenings we all sometimes have.

zeka · Joined: 23 Mar 2007 Posts: 6

zeka · Joined: 23 Mar 2007 Posts: 6

May I ask why dmd.zip and dmc.zip are well... why are there two of them? With overlapping directory structures and file names?

How come run.bat in dmd\samples\d does not work? It uses unix notation for paths, without the drive letter required by windows. How was that supposed to work?

Which editor/IDE do you guys use that can debug? All I need is some basic breakpoint support with "watch" and "stack" windows.

I am coming from many years of C++/Win32 development and some Linux/Python/Ruby scripting.

Thank you.

zeka · Joined: 23 Mar 2007 Posts: 6

Also DMD is trying to use microsoft linker (link.exe) that I do not have. Do I have to use it? DMD does not have its own?

csauls · Joined: 27 Mar 2004 Posts: 278

dmd.zip and dmc.zip are two seperate files because they are two seperate things. Also, generally when updating the compiler you only need dmd.zip -- the other one rarely changes. The D compiler shares the DigitalMars C++ compiler's back-end and utilities, and these are in the dmc.zip.

The "link.exe" it is using is OptLink from "(install-dir)\dm\bin" and included in the dmc.zip contents.
_________________
Chris Nicholson-Sauls

miasma · Joined: 08 Feb 2007 Posts: 13

miasma · Joined: 08 Feb 2007 Posts: 13

jcc7 · Joined: 22 Feb 2004 Posts: 657 Location: Muskogee, OK, USA

When the same file appears in both packages, I always use the newer one (which is usually in the DMD package). I think that's the recommended practice.

Some tools and libraries are used by both DMC and DMD. When Walter improves a shared tool, he tends to just include the improved version in the package that needs it first.