Introduction

The D language borrows from several other programming languages, including statically typed languages such as C, C++, and Java, as well as dynamic languages such as Ruby, Python, and JavaScript. The overall syntax is very similar to C; the use of curly braces to denote blocks, declarations in the form of typename initializer, and more. In fact, a lot of, but not all, C code will compile in D too.

D also is aimed at convenience, productivity, and modeling power. These principles can be illustrated with D's type inference feature. Type inference means you can write code without explicitly thinking of and repeating a variable's type. This gives the convenience of using a dynamic language, without sacrificing the compile-time checks of static typing. You'll use type inference throughout your programs. Any variable declared without a type (typically, the keyword auto is used to declare a variable without an explicit type) has an inferred type, where the type is automatically determined by the right-hand side of the assignment. D is one of the fastest compiling languages available, and it gives quick edit-run cycles that help rapid development in dynamic languages. Modeling power comes in the form of D's rich code generation, introspection, and user-defined types, which you'll start exploring in this chapter when you look at structs and classes.