Walter, no offense, but I think pointing digitalmars.com/d/ directly to the D 2.x specification is a Bad Thing(tm), not to say stupid, marketing-wise. I keep reading comments about D being unstable and hard to use and whatnot, even though D 1.x is totally stable and great already!

I would rather want to see a big "See D 2.0 (experimental branch)" somewhere on the home page, than having to click "1.0" for the stable branch. This makes no sense; we want to attract new users actually, no?

Best regards
-- 
Alexander Panek <alexander.panek@brainsware.org>

On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 05:31:58 -0400, Alexander Panek <alexander.panek@brainsware.org> wrote:

> Walter, no offense, but I think pointing digitalmars.com/d/ directly to
> the D 2.x specification is a Bad Thing(tm), not to say stupid,
> marketing-wise. I keep reading comments about D being unstable and hard
> to use and whatnot, even though D 1.x is totally stable and great
> already!
>
> I would rather want to see a big "See D 2.0 (experimental branch)"
> somewhere on the home page, than having to click "1.0" for the stable
> branch. This makes no sense; we want to attract new users actually,
> no?
>
> Best regards

Agreed. Also consider new users who try to follow along with the documentation to see the newer features failing to work because they downloaded 1.0 and are looking at 2.0 documents.

Alexander Panek wrote:
> Walter, no offense, but I think pointing digitalmars.com/d/ directly to
> the D 2.x specification is a Bad Thing(tm), not to say stupid,
> marketing-wise. I keep reading comments about D being unstable and hard
> to use and whatnot, even though D 1.x is totally stable and great
> already!
> 
> I would rather want to see a big "See D 2.0 (experimental branch)"
> somewhere on the home page, than having to click "1.0" for the stable
> branch. This makes no sense; we want to attract new users actually,
> no?
> 
> Best regards

Votes++

This has been said before on several occasions.
Is there anyone out there who thinks that having the main page be D2.0 makes sense?

--bb

Alexander Panek pisze:
> Walter, no offense, but I think pointing digitalmars.com/d/ directly to
> the D 2.x specification is a Bad Thing(tm), not to say stupid,
> marketing-wise. I keep reading comments about D being unstable and hard
> to use and whatnot, even though D 1.x is totally stable and great
> already!
> 
> I would rather want to see a big "See D 2.0 (experimental branch)"
> somewhere on the home page, than having to click "1.0" for the stable
> branch. This makes no sense; we want to attract new users actually,
> no?
> 
> Best regards

Thanks for this post! I was going to send similar one, but you replaced me.

I agree in 100%. There can be probably nothing worse for D adoption, to direct newcomers to unstable, experimental and (very possibly) buggy D branch on main web page.

BR
Marcin Kuszczak
(aarti_pl)

Alexander Panek wrote:

> Walter, no offense, but I think pointing digitalmars.com/d/ directly to
> the D 2.x specification is a Bad Thing(tm), not to say stupid,
> marketing-wise. I keep reading comments about D being unstable and hard
> to use and whatnot, even though D 1.x is totally stable and great
> already!
> 
> I would rather want to see a big "See D 2.0 (experimental branch)"
> somewhere on the home page, than having to click "1.0" for the stable
> branch. This makes no sense; we want to attract new users actually,
> no?

Also, site http://www.d-programming-language.org/ seems out of date ?

Although it is not as bad as http://www.opend.org/ - it still gives
a strange impression when looking for information on the D language.

--anders

Anders F Björklund pisze:
> Alexander Panek wrote:
> 
>> Walter, no offense, but I think pointing digitalmars.com/d/ directly to
>> the D 2.x specification is a Bad Thing(tm), not to say stupid,
>> marketing-wise. I keep reading comments about D being unstable and hard
>> to use and whatnot, even though D 1.x is totally stable and great
>> already!
>>
>> I would rather want to see a big "See D 2.0 (experimental branch)"
>> somewhere on the home page, than having to click "1.0" for the stable
>> branch. This makes no sense; we want to attract new users actually,
>> no?
> 
> Also, site http://www.d-programming-language.org/ seems out of date ?
> 
> Although it is not as bad as http://www.opend.org/ - it still gives
> a strange impression when looking for information on the D language.
> 
> --anders

In case of this page maybe it will be just enough to make redirection:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://www.digitalmars.com/d">

BR
Marcin Kuszczak
(aarti_pl)

Aarti_pl wrote:

>> Also, site http://www.d-programming-language.org/ seems out of date ?
>>
> In case of this page maybe it will be just enough to make redirection:
> 
> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://www.digitalmars.com/d">

But it could be useful to have a vendor-neutral landing site about the
D programming language itself, before going into DMD or GDC specifics ?

Then again I don't think the specification is released except for in the
compiler, so maybe it makes sense to redirect to the DM implementation.

--anders

Alexander Panek wrote:
> Walter, no offense, but I think pointing digitalmars.com/d/ directly to
> the D 2.x specification is a Bad Thing(tm), not to say stupid,
> marketing-wise. I keep reading comments about D being unstable and hard
> to use and whatnot, even though D 1.x is totally stable and great
> already!
> 
> I would rather want to see a big "See D 2.0 (experimental branch)"
> somewhere on the home page, than having to click "1.0" for the stable
> branch. This makes no sense; we want to attract new users actually,
> no?
> 
> Best regards

Agreed, I think D newcomers will get easily burned by D 2.0.

That website needs a whole overhaul.
The ubuntu website might be a good example.
Emphasis on the 'stable 1.0' and the 'experimental 2.0' as well on how to
get it working are essential on the frontpage.

I'd love to help out if necessary.

== Quote from Anders_F_Björklund (afb@algonet.se)'s article
> Alexander Panek wrote:
> > Walter, no offense, but I think pointing digitalmars.com/d/ directly to the D 2.x specification is a Bad Thing(tm), not to say stupid, marketing-wise. I keep reading comments about D being unstable and hard to use and whatnot, even though D 1.x is totally stable and great already!
> >
> > I would rather want to see a big "See D 2.0 (experimental branch)" somewhere on the home page, than having to click "1.0" for the stable branch. This makes no sense; we want to attract new users actually, no?

I absolutely agree. The D 1.0 spec is more stable, more tested, etc. D 2.0 is a rough draft. The stable version should be more prominent. It should take extra links to get to the current draft of D 2.0.

Also, I'm suspicious of the need for 2 versions for some pages, such as "D links" (http://www.digitalmars.com/d/1.0/dlinks.html).

(By the way, there are some suggestions for D links on the DocComments wiki page that might be nice to apply to that page. Are bug reports the way to get those things improved these days?)


> Also, site http://www.d-programming-language.org/ seems out of date ?
>
> Although it is not as bad as http://www.opend.org/ - it still gives a strange impression when looking for information on the D language.
>
> --anders


The "vendor-neutral" http://www.d-programming-language.org/ page isn't as out-of-date as opend.org, but I did notice that the Gnu D link (should probably say "GDC") should be: http://dgcc.sourceforge.net/

I don't know who is "in charge" of opend.org, but it's a pity that they can't at least add a message to the home page to indicate that the website isn't been maintained and the projects hosted there aren't being developed (at least at opend.org) anymore.