On Sunday, 12 January 2014 at 04:16:39 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Walter and I chose the bugs and sums involved. [...]
I hope your ethical rule won't prevent you from working at least on the blocking and critical issues, because otherwise this would really be shooting yourself in the foot. :P

On 12 January 2014 00:19, Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org> wrote:
> I've placed on behalf of Facebook a few more bounties on D-related issues. There's a bit of budget (a few hundred only) earmarked for GDC- and LDC-specific stuff. I didn't hear anything from Iain Buclaw (what's happening?) and am discussing with Kai Nacke the best angle of attack regarding LDC issues.
>

I must have been too busy not reading emails.  Can you ping me about this?

Thanks.

On Sunday, 12 January 2014 at 00:19:02 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> There's a bit of budget (a few hundred only) earmarked for GDC- and LDC-specific stuff.

Maybe there’s just not so many people around who can help with compilers? I’m an application developer and can surely also help with the library, but hacking on the compiler is something I’ve never done (and don’t know if I would be any good at it)

On Sunday, 12 January 2014 at 12:20:39 UTC, Kira Backes wrote:
> On Sunday, 12 January 2014 at 00:19:02 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> There's a bit of budget (a few hundred only) earmarked for GDC- and LDC-specific stuff.
>
> Maybe there’s just not so many people around who can help with compilers? I’m an application developer and can surely also help with the library, but hacking on the compiler is something I’ve never done (and don’t know if I would be any good at it)

+1. The front-end source code shared by the compilers uses C++, and the style of C++ used is not exactly state of the art. These two facts probably make compiler contributions unappealing to most community members. The bounties are a nice perk, but before the bounty even comes into play, the developer needs to make the plunge into the front-end code base.

The bounties almost exclusively target compiler issues (understandably), so with the relative dearth of compiler developers, I'm not surprised that the bounties haven't changed much.

Am Sun, 12 Jan 2014 11:32:04 +0000
schrieb Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw@gdcproject.org>:

> On 12 January 2014 00:19, Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org> wrote:
> > I've placed on behalf of Facebook a few more bounties on D-related issues. There's a bit of budget (a few hundred only) earmarked for GDC- and LDC-specific stuff. I didn't hear anything from Iain Buclaw (what's happening?) and am discussing with Kai Nacke the best angle of attack regarding LDC issues.

I guess the last missing pieces in GDC (apart from specific bugs)
are  NRVO, exception chaining and LTO. I probably won't work
on any of these issues though, that stuff is too complicated for
me ;-)

But if we could get some new contributors because of these bounties that'd be even better :-)

On Sunday, 12 January 2014 at 12:20:39 UTC, Kira Backes wrote:
> Maybe there’s just not so many people around who can help with compilers? I’m an application developer and can surely also help with the library, but hacking on the compiler is something I’ve never done (and don’t know if I would be any good at it)

There is only one way to find out: Just try your hand at it. ;)

I was in the same position as you some year ago, but found compiler development to be a very interesting field.

David

On 2014-01-12 14:10, David Nadlinger wrote:

> There is only one way to find out: Just try your hand at it. ;)
>
> I was in the same position as you some year ago, but found compiler
> development to be a very interesting field.

Yeah, I agree. I have contributed with some smaller changes to the compiler without having much previous experience.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On 1/12/14 1:07 AM, Francesco Cattoglio wrote:
> On Sunday, 12 January 2014 at 04:16:39 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Walter and I chose the bugs and sums involved. [...]
> I hope your ethical rule won't prevent you from working at least on the
> blocking and critical issues, because otherwise this would really be
> shooting yourself in the foot. :P

Haven't tried it yet, but it should be easy to decline a bounty and then reallocate it.

Andrei

On 1/11/14 10:10 PM, Rikki Cattermole wrote:
> +1 on (potentially) Facebook hiring somebody to work on the toolchain in
> some form. Would set a good precedence and showing just how committed
> Facebook is.

Facebook seldom hires for a specific role in Engineering. After a newly hired engineer goes through the six-week bootcamp that familiarizes him/her with Facebook's technologies, projects, and teams, the engineer chooses a team.

Conversely, projects often get initiated by engineers. It's a surprisingly bottom-up organization.


Andrei

Am 12.01.2014 13:20, schrieb Kira Backes:
> On Sunday, 12 January 2014 at 00:19:02 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> There's a bit of budget (a few hundred only) earmarked for GDC- and
>> LDC-specific stuff.
>
> Maybe there’s just not so many people around who can help with
> compilers? I’m an application developer and can surely also help with
> the library, but hacking on the compiler is something I’ve never done
> (and don’t know if I would be any good at it)


I will surely like to do it, given my background on compiler design, however real life keeps jumping in the way. So I tend just to do advocacy. :)

Compiler development is not as hard as people think, it just plain data structures manipulations.

If you skim through a book like the one from Niklaus Wirth about compiler development[1], you get the basics pretty quickly.

[1] http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/CBEAll.pdf
--
Paulo