I hate the movie "Field of Dreams" where they push the idiotic idea of "Build it and they will come." No, they won't. There's a blizzard of stuff competing for their attention out there, why should they invest the time looking at your stuff? You need to tell them why!

Here's the frustrating typical pattern I've seen here for years:

1. spend hundreds if not thousands of hours developing something really cool
2. spend 2 minutes posting a link to the repository on D.announce
3. someone posts it to reddit. Ignore it
4. get frustrated that nobody looks at it
5. get bitter and quit

Here's the pattern that works a lot better:

1. spend hundreds if not thousands of hours developing something really cool
2. spend 10 minutes writing the announcement to D.announce. Be sure to include:
   who, what, where, when, why, and how
3. someone posts it to reddit
4. post the who, what, where, when, why and how on reddit AS SOON AS POSSIBLE after the reddit link appears. Stuff on reddit has a VERY SHORT shelf life. If it doesn't get action within a couple hours, it fades into oblivion. Identify yourself as the author, say AMA. The first one to post a comment tends to spark and set the tone for the discussion.
5. check back on reddit once an hour or so for the next day, answer questions
6. *****
7. profit!

On 19/08/2015 7:35 a.m., Walter Bright wrote:
> I hate the movie "Field of Dreams" where they push the idiotic idea of
> "Build it and they will come." No, they won't. There's a blizzard of
> stuff competing for their attention out there, why should they invest
> the time looking at your stuff? You need to tell them why!
>
> Here's the frustrating typical pattern I've seen here for years:
>
> 1. spend hundreds if not thousands of hours developing something really
> cool
> 2. spend 2 minutes posting a link to the repository on D.announce
> 3. someone posts it to reddit. Ignore it
> 4. get frustrated that nobody looks at it
> 5. get bitter and quit
>
> Here's the pattern that works a lot better:
>
> 1. spend hundreds if not thousands of hours developing something really
> cool
> 2. spend 10 minutes writing the announcement to D.announce. Be sure to
> include:
>     who, what, where, when, why, and how
> 3. someone posts it to reddit
> 4. post the who, what, where, when, why and how on reddit AS SOON AS
> POSSIBLE after the reddit link appears. Stuff on reddit has a VERY SHORT
> shelf life. If it doesn't get action within a couple hours, it fades
> into oblivion. Identify yourself as the author, say AMA. The first one
> to post a comment tends to spark and set the tone for the discussion.
> 5. check back on reddit once an hour or so for the next day, answer
> questions
> 6. *****
> 7. profit!

+1

We also need to get e.g. websites and web presence better for these projects. Better and good websites to represent will make it easier to find on Google.

Hum, not sure how to do that just yet.

Sage words quickly forgotten, so:
http://wiki.dlang.org/How_You_Can_Help

Feel free too move somewhere more fitting.

On 8/19/2015 12:59 AM, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
> Sage words quickly forgotten, so:
> http://wiki.dlang.org/How_You_Can_Help
>
> Feel free too move somewhere more fitting.

Thanks! Now I can just regularly point to that.

On Tuesday, 18 August 2015 at 19:35:02 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> I hate the movie "Field of Dreams" where they push the idiotic idea of "Build it and they will come." No, they won't. There's a blizzard of stuff competing for their attention out there, why should they invest the time looking at your stuff? You need to tell them why!
>
> Here's the frustrating typical pattern I've seen here for years:
>
> 1. spend hundreds if not thousands of hours developing something really cool
> 2. spend 2 minutes posting a link to the repository on D.announce
> 3. someone posts it to reddit. Ignore it
> 4. get frustrated that nobody looks at it
> 5. get bitter and quit
>

I have a number of projects I'd love to blog about, but I'm currently held back by  https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14758.  Perhaps now is not the right time with the transition DDMD on the horizon, but 14758 is currently holding me back, and recently kept me from soliciting D for my employer's most recent venture.  I have defaulted back to C/C++, unfortunately.

If I could get some support on that issue, I really think I could make a major contribution to D, and perhaps bring an industry with me.  Please just bring me the baton, and I will run.

Mike

On 8/20/2015 6:25 PM, Mike wrote:
> On Tuesday, 18 August 2015 at 19:35:02 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> I hate the movie "Field of Dreams" where they push the idiotic idea of
>> "Build it and they will come." No, they won't. There's a blizzard of
>> stuff competing for their attention out there, why should they invest
>> the time looking at your stuff? You need to tell them why!
>>
>> Here's the frustrating typical pattern I've seen here for years:
>>
>> 1. spend hundreds if not thousands of hours developing something
>> really cool
>> 2. spend 2 minutes posting a link to the repository on D.announce
>> 3. someone posts it to reddit. Ignore it
>> 4. get frustrated that nobody looks at it
>> 5. get bitter and quit
>>
>
> I have a number of projects I'd love to blog about, but I'm currently
> held back by https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14758.  Perhaps
> now is not the right time with the transition DDMD on the horizon, but
> 14758 is currently holding me back, and recently kept me from soliciting
> D for my employer's most recent venture.  I have defaulted back to
> C/C++, unfortunately.
>
> If I could get some support on that issue, I really think I could make a
> major contribution to D, and perhaps bring an industry with me.  Please
> just bring me the baton, and I will run.
>
> Mike

Humm, I wonder if we could strip it out before the final link.

On Thursday, 20 August 2015 at 06:50:51 UTC, Rikki Cattermole wrote:

> Humm, I wonder if we could strip it out before the final link.

I tried a number of things, all discussed on the D.gnu forum (http://forum.dlang.org/post/quemhwpgijwmqtpxukiv@forum.dlang.org).  The only hack that worked some of the time was to compile to assembly, use a sed script to modify the assembly, and then compile the modified assembly.  That's pretty ridiculous.  I can't go to my employer with that and I don't think anyone will take me seriously if my projects contain such things.

A few compiler devs threw me a bone with an -fno-rtti implementation.  I am very grateful to those who worked on that and I think it has great value, but it forces me to compromise on slicing, postblit, and a few others, and that severely diminished its appeal. This specific issue, TypeInfo bloat, is just a symptom of a more general problem in the D toolchain, namely, dead code elimination.

This is not an opportunity to find clever hacks and workarounds, its an opportunity to improve the compiler and linker.

Mike

On Tuesday, 18 August 2015 at 19:35:02 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> I hate the movie "Field of Dreams" where they push the idiotic idea of "Build it and they will come." No, they won't. There's a blizzard of stuff competing for their attention out there, why should they invest the time looking at your stuff? You need to tell them why!
>
> Here's the frustrating typical pattern I've seen here for years:
>
> 1. spend hundreds if not thousands of hours developing something really cool
> 2. spend 2 minutes posting a link to the repository on D.announce
> 3. someone posts it to reddit. Ignore it
> 4. get frustrated that nobody looks at it
> 5. get bitter and quit
>
> Here's the pattern that works a lot better:
>
> 1. spend hundreds if not thousands of hours developing something really cool
> 2. spend 10 minutes writing the announcement to D.announce. Be sure to include:
>    who, what, where, when, why, and how
> 3. someone posts it to reddit
> 4. post the who, what, where, when, why and how on reddit AS SOON AS POSSIBLE after the reddit link appears. Stuff on reddit has a VERY SHORT shelf life. If it doesn't get action within a couple hours, it fades into oblivion. Identify yourself as the author, say AMA. The first one to post a comment tends to spark and set the tone for the discussion.
> 5. check back on reddit once an hour or so for the next day, answer questions
> 6. *****
> 7. profit!

One thing that always comes to mind is that D does not have a free, extensive, structured good reference as Go (https://www.golang-book.com/books/intro) and Rust (https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/index.html) do. I mean, compare D's learn section (http://forum.dlang.org/group/learn) to those other links. It's kind of frustrating to newcomers. I've read Andrei's book and its awesome. Couldn't you guys consider making it open and the official book?

For the web guys, you should really consider committing something with vibe.d to TechEmpower (https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/). A lot of web programmers look at that.

Finally, a good comparison between D's GC and the Go's 1.5 GC would be great. The latter has been making a lot of impact recently.

On Tuesday, 18 August 2015 at 19:35:02 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> I hate the movie "Field of Dreams" where they push the idiotic idea of "Build it and they will come." No, they won't. There's a blizzard of stuff competing for their attention out there, why should they invest the time looking at your stuff? You need to tell them why!

Oh, an official Docker image would also help. Look at Go's: https://hub.docker.com/_/golang/

On Thursday, 20 August 2015 at 14:45:24 UTC, Daniel wrote:
> One thing that always comes to mind is that D does not have a free, extensive, structured good reference as Go (https://www.golang-book.com/books/intro) and Rust (https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/index.html) do. I mean, compare D's learn section (http://forum.dlang.org/group/learn) to those other links. It's kind of frustrating to newcomers. I've read Andrei's book and its awesome. Couldn't you guys consider making it open and the official book?

Can you give some examples of things provided by those books that are not provided by Ali's book? I ignore any project for which you have to pay to get basic documentation, but I don't see how that applies with D.