CS 101: Programming Fundamentals and Version Control in D

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You're in this course because you want to build things that last. Ideally, for generations.

Nassim Taleb has a name for what we're about to do cover in the introduction. He calls it the Lindy effect [1], and he wrote it down in Antifragile [2]:

"For the nonperishable, every additional day may imply a longer life expectancy."

Read that again. A book that's been in print fifty years is more likely to be in print for another fifty than a book that just came off the press. A Broadway show that's been running two years will, on average, run another two. The thing that survives gains life with every day it doesn't die.

Now look at C.

C was born in 1972 [3]. It is fifty-four years old. By Lindy, it has at least another fifty-four years of expected life. It underpins the operating system you're running tonight. It underpins the compiler that will compile the code you write in this course. It is the bedrock, and the bedrock is not going anywhere.

And D? D is C's child. A sensible child. It keeps the memory model, the close-to-the-metal honesty, the "you own your pointers" discipline. But it adds garbage collection when you want it, contracts when you need them, a modern tool-chain that doesn't make you weep into your coffee at 2:10 a.m. D inherits C's Lindy property.

So here's what we're doing this semester. We're not chasing a framework. We're learning the bloodline. The fundamentals that have survived every paradigm shift since the 1970s and will survive every paradigm shift for the next fifty years.