Learn to Tango with D by Kris Bell, Lars Ivar Igesund, Sean Kelly, Michael Parker
Published January 2008
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Summary In recent years, much work has been put into creating programming languages that embody a blend of many of the most admired characteristics of their predecessors. One such language is D, which provides developers with the speed of languages such as C and C++ combined with the power and flexibility of languages such as Ruby and Python.
Learn to Tango with D introduces you to the powerful D language, with special attention given to the Tango software library. A concise yet thorough overview of the language’s syntax and features is presented, followed by an introduction to Tango, the popular general–purpose library you’ll find invaluable when building your D applications.
Authored by prominent D developers Kris Bell, Lars Ivar Igesund, Sean Kelly, and Michael Parker, this book supplies not only the knowledge required to begin building your own D applications, but also the insight these authors have acquired due to their extensive experience working with and participating in the development of the D language.
First off, a word about The D language. D is the brainchild of Walter Bright, who's most likely been writing C and C++ compilers longer than you've been alive. He's the father of Zortech C++ (later Symantec and now Digital Mars), which was the first reasonable C++ compiler for desktop machines (IIRC there were a couple of CFront compilers available for MS-DOS, but the less said about them the better). He knows C and C++ better than anyone else, and, to misquote an old TV commercial, when he talks people listen. So when he decided to start from scratch and design a language and compiler that borrow the best features from C, C++, and Java, you should expect something impressive.
And it is. The design of D is outstanding. It doesn't follow the latest design fads. It dumps all of "change for change's sake" features that bedevil Java as well as all of the byzantine and ever-growing syntax of C++ to reveal a re-imagining of the C/C++/Java feature-set that is elegant, compact, and high-performance. In short, it's not designed by a committee.
Okay, enough sucking up. On to the book.
Learn to Tango with D is a reasonable non-tutorial and non-reference to the D language and the cross-platform Tango runtime library. Like the language itself, the book seems to concentrate on the essentials without getting mired so deeply in syntax that you find yourself lost in some structure without knowing its worth in practice.
The book isn't really a tutorial. Structurally, the closest thing I can compare it with is The C Programming Language by K&R.; Rather than living on one side of the fence (the step-by-step tutorial) or the other (a comprehensive language and function reference), Learn to Tango with D gives a couple of paragraphs of descriptive text and a code example to each language facet and a tithe of the library functions. Other than the opening “Hello World” program (again a hearkening to K&R;), there is very little code that'll compile by itself. There's no “take-away” project that you'll have by the time you get to the end of the book.
And, being an experienced programmer, this is the format that I prefer. Tutorials, while easy to follow, usually go too slowly for me. Reference manuals, while comprehensive, are not organized in a manner that gives one a good overview of the language from a cover-to-cover reading. I already know how a for() loop does and why arrays are frightfully useful things, so I just need some Cliff's notes as to how and why D does things differently than how I'm already doing them.
For the rank-amateur programmer, Learn to Tango with D may or may not be as useful as a slower moving step-by-step tutorial. It really depends on how quickly you can grasp programming topics. I taught myself C largely from The C Programming Language (circa 1983), but it wasn't a easy go of things. But in the era of easily found and helpful web forums and "getting started" articles, it isn't as much a problem as it was as a kid in central Arkansas trying to understand structured programming.
My biggest gripe about Learn to Tango with D is with the book's lack of an index. While the book is fairly compact (a little under 200 pages), it would really benefit from an index. In fact, the book appears to have been printed before it was finished. The last chapter is a whirlwind tour of the pieces of the Tango library that haven't been covered in previous chapters. Threads get a page. Collection classes get about four pages. The last page of the book is a "but wait, there's more, but you won't find it here" page, then the book just ends. The book almost seems like it was the first half of what should be the D equivalent of The C Programming Language, but it just cuts off before everything is covered.
For the record, someone compiled an index for the book here.
Mind you, the Tango library is apparently a moving target and isn't yet glued down and documented in exacting detail like the ISO C++ spec, but it seems like they could've at least covered and indexed what was available and made preparations for a later edition or sequel that covered the rest of the library or the specs once they were set in stone, as the K&R; book did when ANSI C finally happened.
One more thing I want to point out is that the Apress/FirstPress folks seem to understand that we now have computers and that computer screens will no longer blind you with green-on-black text. The book is available on paper ($17 Amazon price) and as a downloadable PDF ($14 at Apress) and Kindle ($10 at Amazon) because sending a couple megabytes over a wire is quite a bit cheaper than sending a couple pounds of paper by truck. The PDF edition of the book works just fine and is, IMHO, quite a bit handier than the paper version because it's got keyword search to make up for the lack of an index.
So if you've a little experience and are investigating D and its associated libraries, Learn to Tango with D is an inexpensive and eco-friendly way to get started.
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