Walter Bright first released the D programming language into the wild on December 8, 2001. Three weeks later, seven more iterations of the compiler had been uploaded to the Digital Mars website, incorporating fixes for bugs reported by users who had already begun experimenting with this exciting new language. In the years since, enthusiasts have continued to actively participate in D's development, pushing the language through two major versions and numerous compiler releases. D is very much a community-driven programming language.
This book aims to bring you up to speed with D to the degree that you can be confident in developing your own D programs and, if you are so motivated, participate in activities that drive the language forward. It is assumed that you already have some familiarity with other languages similar to D, such as C++ or Java, and have some familiarity with working with the command line. With this in mind, fewer details will be given for the features of D that are similar to those of other C-family languages and no instructions will be given on how to perform basic command-line tasks, such as changing directories or setting the system path.
Chapter 1, How to Get a D in Programming, introduces you to the D programming language and provides instructions for setting up the DMD compiler and the DUB build tool and package manager.
Chapter 2, Building a Foundation with D Fundamentals, gives an overview of all of D's foundational features, such as basic types, loop constructs, flow control, and more.
Chapter 3, Programming Objects the D Way, discusses D's support for object-oriented programming, including aggregate types and interfaces.
Chapter 4, Running Code at Compile Time, provides a tutorial on the compile-time aspects of D, including its support for Generative Programming and CTFE (Compile-Time Function Evaluation).
Chapter 5, Generic Programming Made Easy, explores the basics of D's support for Generic Programming, including templates, template constraints, and mixins.
Chapter 6, Understanding Ranges, introduces the Range concept, which serves as the core of D's support for functional programming.
Chapter 7, Composing Functional Pipelines with Algorithms and Ranges, explores several range-based functions in the standard library that can be used to write functional-style code and reduce memory allocations.
Chapter 8, Exploring the Wide World of D, looks at the D ecosystem, highlighting specific websites, tools, and third-party libraries.
Chapter 9, Connecting D with C, references how to create D bindings for C libraries to take advantage of existing codebases.
Chapter 10, Taking D Online, introduces the asynchronous, event-driven networking and web app framework, vibe.d, through the development of a sample project.
Chapter 11, Taking D to the Next Level, provides a quick look at other language and library features that can serve as a starting point for further exploration of the D programming language.