Has D failed? ( unpopular opinion but I think yes ) (page 9)

On Saturday, 13 April 2019 at 11:20:07 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: > ...Speaking only of myself, let me state for the record that I hold absolutely no illusion of my performance as a leader in this community. Without being dramatic I reckon I'm unfit for leadership. (Most certainly not for lack of trying, but that doesn't matter.) An A leader should get A+ people to follow. We don't have enough of those. I hope you don't mind saying this here, but one thing I saw for awhile was lack of your presence here (Forums), which on the other hand I think it changed (for good) over the past month. To be honest for some time I wondered if you were still related to D. Maybe around this time you were doing great things behind the scenes, but I think the top (Walter and You) should be engaged with community more and more to show everyone that you're really serious. Like for example Linus Torvalds, even when he was bashing some people on LKML he was there for good or bad. Besides that a few days ago I created a topic thanking this community for their work in this language. Matheus.

On Saturday, 13 April 2019 at 14:40:10 UTC, silentwatcher wrote: > On Saturday, 13 April 2019 at 14:19:51 UTC, Mike Franklin wrote: >> On Friday, 12 April 2019 at 16:45:04 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote: >> >>> To be honest, I've seriously thought about forking D on several occasions. I haven't gone through with it yet, for many reasons. But if push comes to shove, I'm ready to take it on, and I'm pretty certain that I'm not alone. >> >> Yes, you're not alone. >> >> Mike > > are there more people who would like to fork? there is already http://www.volt-lang.org wouldn't that be something to wander to?

On Saturday, 13 April 2019 at 14:19:51 UTC, Mike Franklin wrote: > On Friday, 12 April 2019 at 16:45:04 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote: > >> To be honest, I've seriously thought about forking D on several occasions. I haven't gone through with it yet, for many reasons. But if push comes to shove, I'm ready to take it on, and I'm pretty certain that I'm not alone. > > Yes, you're not alone. > > Mike Instead of making a fork which is equivalent to making a coup d'état why not try the election first Andrei said they need managers I would contribute to that if I could do any good.

On Saturday, 13 April 2019 at 14:19:51 UTC, Mike Franklin wrote: > On Friday, 12 April 2019 at 16:45:04 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote: > >> To be honest, I've seriously thought about forking D on several occasions. I haven't gone through with it yet, for many reasons. But if push comes to shove, I'm ready to take it on, and I'm pretty certain that I'm not alone. > > Yes, you're not alone. > > Mike Yes, you're most definitely not alone: https://github.com/dragon-lang/dc (complete fork) https://github.com/wilzbach/dts (proposal for a new standard library) The main reason dts isn't existing yet is that I am currently really low on time.

On Saturday, 13 April 2019 at 17:03:23 UTC, Suleyman wrote: > On Saturday, 13 April 2019 at 14:19:51 UTC, Mike Franklin wrote: >> On Friday, 12 April 2019 at 16:45:04 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote: >> >>> To be honest, I've seriously thought about forking D on several occasions. I haven't gone through with it yet, for many reasons. But if push comes to shove, I'm ready to take it on, and I'm pretty certain that I'm not alone. >> >> Yes, you're not alone. >> >> Mike > > Instead of making a fork which is equivalent to making a coup d'état why not try the election first *cough* AGM *cough* > Andrei said they need managers I would contribute to that if I could do any good. Awesome.

On Saturday, 13 April 2019 at 00:25:06 UTC, Suleyman wrote: > I think the problem with D is that it started getting a mass adoption and this requires a bigger management, for example: regular user polls, prioritization, concentration of efforts, friendly contribution guides, time limits on issue resolutions, regular health stats, coordination with sponsors, maybe even a podcast especially for what would be a lightning for introducing libraries and new features... etc. D is no longer a niche language and this is a problem. Great ideas!

On Saturday, 13 April 2019 at 19:32:55 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote: > Awesome. I didn't mean myself there I'm not a senior in anything but I'm sure we have enough seniors that good do the job maybe yourself.

On 4/13/2019 6:08 AM, Nierjerson wrote: > I do not think think anyone is criticizing you or Walter personally or your capabilities in what you do. EXCEPT: You guys have to figure out how to take D to the next stage of growth. You guys are the leaders and so only you can do it. No one else can step in and say "This is how we are going to make it happen". Actually, yes they can. There's a lot that goes on that I have no involvement in, people just stepped up and did it. For example, gdc ldc bugzilla autotester dub VisualD Dfeed (the forum software) the website server What doesn't work is giving Andrei & I long lists of action items. I get them every day. You want something to happen, step up and take a role and make it happen.

April 13, 2019

Re: Has D failed? ( unpopular opinion but I think yes )

Posted by Mike Franklin
in reply to Suleyman

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Mike Franklin

Posted in reply to Suleyman

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On Saturday, 13 April 2019 at 17:03:23 UTC, Suleyman wrote:

> Instead of making a fork which is equivalent to making a coup d'état why not try the election first Andrei said they need managers I would contribute to that if I could do any good.

What election?  D is now embracing democracy?  I might go for a republic.

Anyway, forking does not mean the end of D any more than than having children means the end of their parents.  It's not a coup; it's natural evolution.

Lately, I've been contributing to D every day, as have a *very* few others.  But Walter, Andrei, and I seldom see eye to eye about what's important.  They've told me on more than one occasion that what I'm doing and what I want for D is not important (e.g. https://forum.dlang.org/post/pffvdn$v2$1@digitalmars.com).  I know of a couple others who have left the D scene over that.  In fact, I find that D has a major turnover problem largely stemming from that.

I've asked Walter and Andrei for their priorities so I could find something to work on that both I and they want.  They only gave me a few items (I wish they would have given me more), but I didn't find any of them all that important compared to other things I had on my list.

Lately, I find the things that Walter is doing in DMD to be a very low priority compared to all of the bugs in bugzilla for which only he is qualified to fix.  I wish he'd stop refactoring code and start fixing bugs, but, maybe his refactorings of late are laying some groundwork for more important stuff.  I don't know.  His work to convert the DMD backend to D last year was *most* welcome.

I almost never see Andrei doing much visible work.  Maybe he's too busy doing other things that I don't realize need done, or doing work through others, like his students.  I don't know.

I don't see what goes on behind the scenes, but from my perspective the majority of good work on D is done by handful of passionate volunteers who hold no real position in D.

Some transparency about what's going on, and where things are heading might go a long way.  If I see common ground, I'm in.

Andrei got me fired up about std.v2, "worrying too much about changing things", and "druntime must go...[we need an] opt-in continuum".  That's exactly what I've been trying to do in D for the past 5 years (understand I had to learn before I could actually do anything).  Finally, common ground.  I'm in, and I'm going to try to make that a reality.  However, if that does not materialize, I see too much adversity to change, I see things going in the wrong direction, or I face unnecessary obstruction, I'm not going to complain, lobby, etc; I'm going to go back to planning my alternative.

With regard to what motivates me to volunteer time and effort to a project, I have much in common with Howard Roark.

Mike