Solid introduction to D basics
The first English-language book on D, Learn To Tango with D, is a no-crap quick ramp-up guide to the language and the popular Tango general-purpose library. Half of the 188 pages are an introduction to how D does things, while the other half walks through some Tango basics. It's written in a fast, loose idiom that doesn't try to teach you programming as much as it shows how to do your favorite C++ or Java tricks in D. This fills a need since the existing D documentation is rather technical and not well indexed, but it's not something the dedicated and curious engineer couldn't figure out for himself.
After the basics, you're introduced to Tango. I should point out that D ships with a standard library called Phobos and that Tango is a (friendly) competitor to it. The two aren't mutually compatible at all, and you'll run into D code that uses each, so don't think you're getting the entire D story from this book. That said, Tango has neat ideas and a passionate community behind it, so you're not making any compromise on quality by using it. This section is a bit too high-level for my taste; it's an introduction, not a reference. While you can certainly get production-quality API docs from the Tango web site, don't expect the book to be one.
Summing up, this book is for experienced C/C++/Java programmers who've heard about this D thing and want to see what it's all about. Those who prefer learning from source code or documentation won't really need this, and those who do need it will probably find no need to read it a second time. However, as the only book on D in the King's English, it's worth recommending solely on that basis.
(Review text copied from my website.)
Not very good
It really wasn't a very good book. It is very thin without the more complete examples you would expect in a book on development in other languages. It would be nice to see a book written teaching D from the ground up. Love the language, but the book is not worth the price.
(2 reviews)
