On Sunday, 18 June 2017 at 20:42:55 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 6/18/17 11:04 PM, Joakim wrote:
>> I strongly disagree about deletion and banning.  The moment you start removing dissenting opinions, you move towards a bubble where you get isolated from the world.
> Foul or abusive language has nothing to do with dissenting. It's really simple - using unprofessional language that could get you fired from a workplace is not accepted here. Thanks. -- Andrei

I don't see any foul or abusive language in the post bachmeier quoted, nor did bachmeier say that was his concern, so we weren't talking about that.

These are two new users who are unhappy with the state of D and unfortunately larding a lot of attitude into their complaints, which is why I've largely ignored them.  That may be accepted if they're paying up the butt to use D, but they're getting it for free, so why deal with their entitlement and potentially escalate the situation?

But even if there were foul or abusive language, which we may disagree on whether the posts in this thread qualify as, I'd only consider the extreme measures cited after repeated warning, as such removals are then often abused to silence criticism.  We may not like the strong way they worded it, but post deletion and the banhammer should really be reserved for extreme situations.  I don't think this qualifies.

On 6/19/17 12:07 AM, Joakim wrote:
> On Sunday, 18 June 2017 at 20:42:55 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> On 6/18/17 11:04 PM, Joakim wrote:
>>> I strongly disagree about deletion and banning.  The moment you start removing dissenting opinions, you move towards a bubble where you get isolated from the world.
>> Foul or abusive language has nothing to do with dissenting. It's really simple - using unprofessional language that could get you fired from a workplace is not accepted here. Thanks. -- Andrei
> 
> I don't see any foul or abusive language in the post bachmeier quoted, nor did bachmeier say that was his concern, so we weren't talking about that.

Walter and I talk about that. -- Andrei

On Sunday, 18 June 2017 at 21:06:07 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
> On Sunday, 18 June 2017 at 21:01:10 UTC, Martin Nowak wrote:
>> You have quite a good point there, that said the Windows experience is fairly bad, no point about it. That's mostly because VisualStudio integration is required, be it for their linker and libc only, and that isn't too well done.
>
> Is it possible to use lld on Windows?  I never tried it myself.
> https://lld.llvm.org/

They say it's mostly done:

https://lld.llvm.org/windows_support.html

kinke integrated the Windows support in the latest ldc beta, so that you can cross-compile and link with ldc and lld to Windows from any other ldc/lld-supported platform, like macOS or linux, provided you have the MSVC libc available for executables or shared libraries (libc not needed for static libraries of course):

https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc/releases/tag/v1.3.0-beta2

On Sunday, 18 June 2017 at 21:06:07 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
> Is it possible to use lld on Windows?  I never tried it myself.
> https://lld.llvm.org/

Says they don't support debug info (debugger being another dependency on VisualStudio).
But yes, different toolchains (mingw, lld) and cross compilation (gdc, ldc) might improve the situation.
The last gdc cross-compiler supported Windows is from 1/24/16.
ftp://ftp.gdcproject.org/binaries/4.9.2/x86_64-linux-gnu/

AFAIK clang had quite some Windows support issues as well, so maybe we can draw some bits from their solutions.

Part of the problem is that we have very few contributors that are using Windows, so there isn't much personal motivation to work on that.

On Sunday, 18 June 2017 at 11:59:34 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> As D continues to grow, there will be messages like this posted more frequently. Imagine that you work at a large company and are considering adopting D so you decide to check out the forum.

Ruby talk in the early days went through a fairly painful phase like this..... attracting trolls like flies.

Oh gawd: Remember that one guy who analysed each language by a long long list of somewhat odd criteria and demanded all deficiencies be remedied...?

Fortunately the overwhelming niceness of the community prevailed.

I do think liberal application of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disemvoweling of any personal attacks and/or nastiness would rapidly starve these threads of oxygen.

On Sunday, 18 June 2017 at 14:53:57 UTC, Wulfklaue wrote:
> I already concluded from this "discussion" that there is no point trying to point out issues with D. Maybe too many people in the past pointed out the same stuff and they are tired of it.

In an open-source community, the best way to change something is to make a start on it yourself and try to get others interested.  Or if you can afford it you can see if Walter or Andrei might be interested in helping you under a consulting arrangement, or try to find someone else in the community that you could pay to change it for you.  If you don't want to do the work, and can't pay, then you can still try to persuade people - and often enough, if you are gently persistent and your point is good, you'll be able to influence things over time.  What doesn't work is complaining and expecting others to fix your stuff for you.

In theory, when you purchase products and services your supplier ought to be much more responsive than where you don't pay.  My experience has been that even when you pay quite a lot - millions of dollars - one can often be disappointed in just how responsive a commercial supplier will be.  So increasingly over time for me I have come to see the merits of open-source, because at least I can figure out how to change something and find someone who will help me do the work.

> There are good people in the D community but in some responses you get the attitude like "how do you not know something so simple". And i am not talking about this topic. There are responses that borderline "how stupid are you". Maybe not in those words but you can read it clearly.

I do not recognise this attitude at all - in fact it's remarkable how helpful people are, and how some of the best people in the community spend a great deal of time helping others for free.

>>Perhaps _this_ is the right packaging for D right now, to keep away the kinds of casual users who would not be suited for D.

Yes - it's an advantage for D in its present state of development that the frictions act as a shield and tend to mean the people who persist have a high level of technical ability and resourcefulness, and the people shape the culture.

If you go buy something precious, they don't give you the hard sell.  They say this X is not for everyone, but if you would like to understand it, here is what the thing is like.  And I think it's like that with D - it's not for everyone, but if it were I wouldn't be here.

> I am not targeting any person here but there are people here with good intentions and people who to not realize how there responses look down on people. Some do not understand that not everybody has 10+ years in developing C/C++ programs and knows every terminology and understands every aspect of the memory management and the ins and out.

Personally I programmed intensely in C and assembler from 1983 - 1988 at high school, a little from 1996-1998 and I picked up programming again in 2014.  So in the beginning I had no idea why people were so focused on memory because when I learnt to program memory was pretty fast vs CPU and that changed whilst I was doing other things.  But I learnt a lot just in a couple of years from being around here - and it wouldn't have been the case in a different community.  I don't think it's true that people here look down on you or that they expect you to understand every nuance of memory management.  One might feel initially inadequate, yes, but that's what it's like to learn something new.  And people may also be a bit short on time - but it's not their responsibility to spend their free time to teach you.  It's nice when they do, but it's up to us to teach ourselves using whatever resources we can find.

> Frankly, sometimes i wish i NEVER discovered the forums because seeing some of the discussions and reading the past discussions, it feels like a darn pool of evil. Good, bad and just ugly. It frankly demotivates...

You must be reading different forums from me.

> And it has now **highly** opinionated my attitude about D, to the point that makes me wonder. As a potential employer:
>
> If i hire people with no D knowledge and they need to learn D. They go to these forums and get sucked into this.

I'm paying people to work in D, and have done since 2015.  I personally would never hire someone who would be put off by robust exchanges or who would lack the resourcefulness and ability to tolerate discomfort that everything not being completely shiny (documentation, installation on Windows) would deter them.

In fact, I would go further and say that D is a good hiring filter for the very reasons that you find offputting (though you interpret the meaning of things differently from me).

And I'm in a different business, most likely, and it may be that at this point the language is a good fit for me and not for some others - that's okay.  D isn't for everyone, and it doesn't need to appeal to most people to continue to grow at a stunning pace.  It just needs to appeal a little more to those already on the fence or for whom D is a solution to their pain.


> What about easy of learning, issues they may run into. It means time i need to spend teaching new employees to avoid some of the issues mentioned here ( and a lot of past topics that i found ). I do not understand because on other language forums the discussions are more civilized, there seem to be less looking down on people. Maybe i use the Rust argument a bit too much but to be good at Rust a good background is extreme helpful and yet, i do not notice the same attitude with people ask stupid questions or are not happy about something.

Why can't the French be more like the English?  Well, because they are French.  And it's the same with computer language communities - they each have their own history and culture, and it isn't going to change much to wish things were different from how they are.

BTW where people have been harshest here, I see that much more amongst people who are natural technical leaders and have strong opinions on things - that are often thought through and insightful.  And I think it's mostly just what you expect to see in a community where people care about technical excellence - they want to do things right and can't stand to see it done wrong.  There's going to be a bit more discord if you have people like that, but it will be generative discord, and it's the only way you get to excellence.  (Try the kernel mailing list if you doubt me).  I don't see much harshness from experienced people towards newcomers, and Walter and Andrei and others are pretty quick to put a stop to that on very rare occasions when it happens.

> standard documentation disaster ( until you discover the library doc )
?

> And please, do not quote my text piece by piece, ripping me a new one for being inflammatory or whatever. Its how I from MY perceptive see things. Just as you, the person reading this will have there own opinion.

Sure, but you must expect people to have different perspectives from you and want to explain why they disagree.

> As for me, i will be looking a bit more into other languages and there communities. For a hobby project D is perfectly fine but as a future employer my standard is much more ridge.

I'd be interested to see what you find.  If gentleness is important to you, I do think you will find places that emphasize that more.  On the other hand if language quality, versatility, plasticity, readability, productivity are important and it needs to be native code then I am not so sure.  One only gets to quality via robust debate, and the nature of electronic communication means that it unavoidably doesn't always stay gentle - that's the price one pays for the benefits of this new form of social organisation.

> I want to hire people first with lower experience ( cheaper ) and let them learn on the job

Fair enough.  There's a massive difference in productivity of people - if you can spot the best people then less experienced ones might not be so expensive and they can learn quickly.  But hiring people who aren't the best but are cheap is very expensive in the long run.  I very much doubt very good people will struggle to learn D, and the doc situation is way better than when I started myself.

> And well ... lets say that my impression has been a mixed experience so far. Especially if this means exposing people with maybe scripting language experience to a compile language like D.

I think that if one only knows a scripting language and has never played with electronics and microprocessors then one has a basic hole in one's knowledge as a programmer.  Remedying that will take time (and it's harder for many adults than in childhood), no matter what language you learn next.  But that's a fault of the education system and the modern intolerance of discomfort, not D.

> Maybe its time to tidy the ship because first impression count for a lot.
I think you get the fundamentals right first and worry about polishing it in time.  Lipstick on a pig - it is still a pig.  And I don't think first impressions in the sense you mean count that much, particularly if you have relatively low market share.  I mean if people think the language is pretty good but documentation isn't yet good enough they won't write it off forever and will be open to taking another look in two or three years.

On 6/18/2017 2:07 PM, Joakim wrote:
> I don't see any foul or abusive language in the post bachmeier quoted,

Insulting forum members by telling them to "grow up", "stinks", for example, is abusive language. As is the Subject of the post.

Professional decorum is expected in this n.g. and on the dlang github forums.

For further questions about what constitutes professional decorum, I recommend reading "Emily Post" books on manners which are readily available.

On Sunday, 18 June 2017 at 21:37:13 UTC, Martin Nowak wrote:
> On Sunday, 18 June 2017 at 21:06:07 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
>> Is it possible to use lld on Windows?  I never tried it myself.
>> https://lld.llvm.org/
>
> Says they don't support debug info (debugger being another dependency on VisualStudio).
> But yes, different toolchains (mingw, lld) and cross compilation (gdc, ldc) might improve the situation.
> The last gdc cross-compiler supported Windows is from 1/24/16.
> ftp://ftp.gdcproject.org/binaries/4.9.2/x86_64-linux-gnu/
>
> AFAIK clang had quite some Windows support issues as well, so maybe we can draw some bits from their solutions.
>
> Part of the problem is that we have very few contributors that are using Windows, so there isn't much personal motivation to work on that.

I wasn't using Windows but we are now, and there's an author of one Phobos module that will be starting to help me full-time from maybe August, so we could look at what could be done if we could start small.

Windows has been a bit of a pain, but mostly from the native code library side.  It should be easy to install google snappy right?  On Linux it is.  On Windows, not so much...  And that's just one library.

I almost never use debuggers myself so might be interesting to get lld working with ldc (dmd too?) if it's possible as could simplify our builds a bit.

On Friday, 16 June 2017 at 14:40:42 UTC, jmh530 wrote:
> On Friday, 16 June 2017 at 13:30:21 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>
>> On the other hand, maybe D is not meant for the kind of user who needs such an easy path.  What does it matter if you set D up really easily and then can't grasp such a sprawling, lower-level language?  Perhaps _this_ is the right packaging for D right now, to keep away the kinds of casual users who would not be suited for D.
>>
>
> Today I agree with that, but in 1-2 years when mir/lubeck are in better shape I'm probably going to disagree. Hoping someone packages something together like an Anaconda for D that just easily works.

What's missing from Lubeck that you would like to see?

Wrt Anaconda for D - it's the native code (C) libraries that are the biggest pain point.  Same thing as with Python really.

So I wonder if we could figure out a way to host build configuration and build itself for the C libraries underlying dub bindings and wrappers.  It's really a Windows-specific problem, because even today there doesn't seem to be a great answer.  I played with chocolatey a bit, but it doesn't always seem to be that helpful in practice.

On Friday, 16 June 2017 at 15:54:36 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> On Friday, 16 June 2017 at 15:47:15 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
>> If it is true that there is increased traction for D, then getting some resource into the front of house stuff will be critical to that traction fading and disappearing.
>
> Yes, daily downloads of dmd are up 25-30% this year:
>
> http://erdani.com/d/downloads.daily.png

"
But when will D take off.
There are no jobs in D.
D hasn't taken off yet so it won't
etc etc.
"