The D Programming Language [Paperback]

Andrei Alexandrescu (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 12, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0321635361 | ISBN-13: 978-0321635365 | Edition: 1

“To the best of my knowledge, D offers an unprecedentedly adroit integration of several powerful programming paradigms: imperative, object-oriented, functional, and meta.”
—From the Foreword by Walter Bright

“This is a book by a skilled author describing an interesting programming language. I’m sure you’ll find the read rewarding.”
—From the Foreword by Scott Meyers

D is a programming language built to help programmers address the challenges of modern software development. It does so by fostering modules interconnected through precise interfaces, a federation of tightly integrated programming paradigms, language-enforced thread isolation, modular type safety, an efficient memory model, and more.

The D Programming Language is an authoritative and comprehensive introduction to D. Reflecting the author’s signature style, the writing is casual and conversational, but never at the expense of focus and pre­cision. It covers all aspects of the language (such as expressions, statements, types, functions, contracts, and modules), but it is much more than an enumeration of features.

Inside the book you will find

• In-depth explanations, with idiomatic examples, for all language features
• How feature groups support major programming paradigms
• Rationale and best-use advice for each major feature
• Discussion of cross-cutting issues, such as error handling, contract programming, and concurrency
• Tables, figures, and “cheat sheets” that serve as a handy quick reference for day-to-day problem solving with D

Written for the working programmer, The D Programming Language not only introduces the D language—it presents a compendium of good practices and idioms to help both your coding with D and your coding in general.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Andrei Alexandrescu, Ph.D., is the author of the award-winning books Modern C++ Design (Addison-Wesley, 2001) and, with Herb Sutter, C++ Coding Standards (Addison-Wesley, 2005). Through his work, Andrei has garnered a solid reputation as a leading innovator in programming languages and methods. Since 2006, he has collaborated closely with Walter Bright—the original designer and implementer of D—on designing and implementing the language and its standard library.

Product Details

• Paperback: 460 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (June 12, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321635361
• ISBN-13: 978-0321635365
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 1 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #463,162 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Andrei Alexandrescu coined the colloquial term "modern C++", used today to describe a collection of important C++ styles and idioms. His eponymous book on the topic, Modern C++ Design: Generic Programming and Design Patterns Applied (Addison-Wesley, 2001), revolutionized C++ programming and produced a lasting influence not only on subsequent work on C++, but also on other languages and systems. With Herb Sutter, Andrei is also the coauthor of C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices (Addison-Wesley, 2004). Through Andrei's varied work on libraries and applications, as well as his research in machine learning and natural language processing, he has garnered a solid reputation in both industrial and academic circles. Since 2006, he has been second-in-command to Walter Bright, the D programming language inventor and initial implementer. Andrei has been the key designer of many important features of D and has authored a large part of D's standard library, positioning him to write an authoritative book on the new language, appropriately entitled, The D Programming Language. Andrei holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Washington and a BS in Electrical Engineering from University "Politehnica" Bucharest. He works as a Research Scientist for Facebook.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A great introduction to D June 25, 2010

By Justin E Greenwood

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book is one of the things D really needed to launch itself out of obscurity. It thoroughly explains the strengths of the language, why it is a practical language to learn and use, and it walks you through the more complex aspects of the language such as meta programming and concurrency/threading (which is often overlooked). As others have stated, it would be nice to have more real world examples - but then again, I never liked the books that have 5 out of 6 pages completely filled with code. This book is a good introduction to the rich toolset D provides - it's up to you to dig in and get experienced.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Good Read Even For A Hardcore D User June 22, 2010

By D. Simcha

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I've been using D regularly for about 2 years. When I heard about this book, I bought it more out of curiosity than anything. I was pleasantly surprised when this book revealed facets of D that I had not been aware of through two years of usage, library writing and forum surfing. Andrei's entertaining yet to-the-point style makes this a pleasant read, and he manages to cover both basic and advanced topics thoroughly yet succinctly.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Modern Classic August 1, 2010

By Michael Parker

Format:Paperback

First, a little context. I've been around the D community for a few years, keep a blog about items of interest to D users, maintain an open source D project and, in 2007, coauthored "Learn to Tango with D". Through all of that, the majority of my experience was with D1. I was hesitant, even reluctant, to use version 2 of the language because, in some ways, it is a bit paradigm shift from the first version. Andrei's book has dispelled any doubts I had about moving forward with D2.

D2 melds several different programming paradigms into one whole. One of the most radical differences from existing C-family languages is the concept of 'ranges', which are intended as an improvement over, and replacement for, the more familiar 'iterators' of other languages. Before the book, while ranges were being implemented in the alpha versions of the D2 compiler, some people had trouble wrapping their heads around ranges. Here, Andrei explains them in a way that makes them easy to grok and will have you using them in no time. And it's important that you do understand them as Phobos, D's standard library (which is intentionally not given much coverage in the book) has been reworked around the concept.

Aside from ranges and the more basic features of D which aren't so foreign, you'll also learn about D's interpretation of constness and immutability (D's const and immutable keywords are intended to improve upon the mess that is C++ const), and the D style of concurrent programming. D is poised to slot seamlessly in to the world of multi-core programming, with built-in features that simplify the process for those, like me, who can't think on that scale. Andrei's explanation of concurrency pitfalls and D's solutions should turn a light on for you if you're in the dark about it.

I've highlighted these particular aspects of the book because they are the areas about which I was most uncertain before reading it. But the entire book is well written, witty and easy to read. If you've never written a line of D in your life, you should have no trouble doing so after reading this book. I can't begin to speculate how much a beginning programmer might get out of it, but I would certainly recommend it to anyone who has at least a basic familiarity with another language from the C family. Andrei has that rare gift of taking potentially boring or complicated material and making it not only digestable, but fun.