On Wednesday, 31 May 2017 at 12:28:47 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote:

> I am more inclined to be persuaded by the fact that everybody that has actually done GPU programming has said that it makes sense to them.

It would be a mistake to judge that on the basis of those posting in this forum. I've done some GPU work, but "compute" doesn't mean anything to me. The R task view for HPC lists a bunch of GPU packages, none of which use "compute" in the name: https://cran.r-project.org/web/views/HighPerformanceComputing.html

I've also used PyCUDA and PyOpenCL, and am aware of PyMagma, none of which refer to "compute".

> But can we please reduce the bike shedding

Marketing is only bike shedding if you don't care how many people make use of your work.

On Wednesday, May 31, 2017 18:55:14 bachmeier via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
> On Wednesday, 31 May 2017 at 12:28:47 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
> > But can we please reduce the bike shedding
>
> Marketing is only bike shedding if you don't care how many people make use of your work.

That may be true, but given how this was supposed to be a thread on some great news about this cool library, having most of the posts be about the name has got to be frustrating.

Yes, the name matters, but this thread has been pretty thoroughly derailed from its original purpose.

- Jonathan M Davis

On Wednesday, 31 May 2017 at 12:28:47 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
> Perhaps there will be scope for renaming if/when this also includes graphics when either OpenCL is merged into the Vulkan API or Petar Kirov gets Vulkan SPIRV generation going on LLVM, but for now the name stays.

People who GPU program are indeed a small group. But you do NOT entice other people to try it, when they do not even know a language has this feature set. And this comes down to marketing.

Lets post "D has DCompute" or "D has D-GPU"... on Reddit, ycombinator and other forum or news site.

What do you think people will more likely click on?

The people who are used to Compute, will still click on the GPU link.

The people who are unfamiliar with Compute will still click on the GPU link, because its such a familiar term to them.

And so what if people start a big discussion about the name. If only 10% of those people come to the D site from a either language, its a instant success. Positive or negative marketing is a win-win in this case.

And GPU does not mean directly DirectX, OpenGL in people there minds. GPU people think about there graphical card because that is exactly what the term means.

I have no dog in this discussion but as somebody just learning D it seems like a total wasted opportunity.

Reading past topics D on those sites, it seems D has been fighting the whole GC stigma for years. D its GC marketing is bad. While other languages ( some even with GC like Go ) simply sail past, thanks to people pushing its virtues, when in reality D its GC actually performs better in specific tests. Marketing... From my view D has been mostly sitting on its behind for years, hoping for word-to-mouth to do the trick. While other languages used there big parents name as a cheap talking point memo ( Apple, Google, Mozilla ... ).

And this is exactly why D has such difficulty being accepted outside its own community. People being too stubborn to recognize a marketing opportunity. My apologies for that comment but its true. D does not have the big name recognition and has a even "old" stigma these days.

My advice to Walter is to hire a actual marketing person that can help focus resources and ideas. Hell, even a name change, a new look, ... who knows.

On Wednesday, 31 May 2017 at 22:15:33 UTC, Wulfklaue wrote:
> On Wednesday, 31 May 2017 at 12:28:47 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
>> Perhaps there will be scope for renaming if/when this also includes graphics when either OpenCL is merged into the Vulkan API or Petar Kirov gets Vulkan SPIRV generation going on LLVM, but for now the name stays.
>
> People who GPU program are indeed a small group. But you do NOT entice other people to try it, when they do not even know a language has this feature set. And this comes down to marketing.
>
> Lets post "D has DCompute" or "D has D-GPU"... on Reddit, ycombinator and other forum or news site.
>
> What do you think people will more likely click on?
>

So you don't post either of those titles and instead post "D has DCompute: Native heterogeneous computing on GPUs and more, hassle free!"

> And so what if people start a big discussion about the name. If only 10% of those people come to the D site from a either language, its a instant success. Positive or negative marketing is a win-win in this case.

For this discussion it is not the case, I haven't seen any new names.
So (everybody) please discontinue derailing this thread.

> My advice to Walter is to hire a actual marketing person that can help focus resources and ideas.

Perhaps that is a good idea,  but it is not for me to decide. For my part in marketing I plan to give a talk/workshop at IWOCL just after DConf next may.

On 5/31/17 7:28 PM, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
> On Wednesday, 31 May 2017 at 22:15:33 UTC, Wulfklaue wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 31 May 2017 at 12:28:47 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
>>> Perhaps there will be scope for renaming if/when this also includes graphics when either OpenCL is merged into the Vulkan API or Petar Kirov gets Vulkan SPIRV generation going on LLVM, but for now the name stays.
>>
>> People who GPU program are indeed a small group. But you do NOT entice other people to try it, when they do not even know a language has this feature set. And this comes down to marketing.
>>
>> Lets post "D has DCompute" or "D has D-GPU"... on Reddit, ycombinator and other forum or news site.
>>
>> What do you think people will more likely click on?
>>
> 
> So you don't post either of those titles and instead post "D has DCompute: Native heterogeneous computing on GPUs and more, hassle free!"

"D has the invariant qualifier: It means immutable".

On 5/31/17 6:03 PM, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
> On Wednesday, May 31, 2017 18:55:14 bachmeier via Digitalmars-d-announce
> wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 31 May 2017 at 12:28:47 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
>>> But can we please reduce the bike shedding
>>
>> Marketing is only bike shedding if you don't care how many people
>> make use of your work.
> 
> That may be true, but given how this was supposed to be a thread on some
> great news about this cool library, having most of the posts be about the
> name has got to be frustrating.
> 
> Yes, the name matters, but this thread has been pretty thoroughly derailed
> from its original purpose.
> 
> - Jonathan M Davis

You're right. Congratulations Nicholas for this great work and I wish it succeeds by any name he chooses for it. -- Andrei

On Wednesday, 31 May 2017 at 22:03:25 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

> Yes, the name matters, but this thread has been pretty thoroughly derailed from its original purpose.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis

https://www.xkcd.com/386/

On Thursday, 1 June 2017 at 01:42:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 5/31/17 7:28 PM, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 31 May 2017 at 22:15:33 UTC, Wulfklaue wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, 31 May 2017 at 12:28:47 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
>>>> Perhaps there will be scope for renaming if/when this also includes graphics when either OpenCL is merged into the Vulkan API or Petar Kirov gets Vulkan SPIRV generation going on LLVM, but for now the name stays.
>>>
>>> People who GPU program are indeed a small group. But you do NOT entice other people to try it, when they do not even know a language has this feature set. And this comes down to marketing.
>>>
>>> Lets post "D has DCompute" or "D has D-GPU"... on Reddit, ycombinator and other forum or news site.
>>>
>>> What do you think people will more likely click on?
>>>
>> 
>> So you don't post either of those titles and instead post "D has DCompute: Native heterogeneous computing on GPUs and more, hassle free!"
>
> "D has the invariant qualifier: It means immutable".

While that statement holds and is the whole story,

> D has DCompute: It means you can program GPUs with it

is not the whole story and is misleading in a marketing sense, but one that undersells dcompute, not oversells it.

whereas

> D has DCompute: Native heterogeneous computing on GPUs and more, hassle free!

does tell the whole story and sells dcompute as it is.

On Thursday, 1 June 2017 at 01:45:24 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> You're right. Congratulations Nicholas for this great work and I wish it succeeds by any name he chooses for it. -- Andrei

And nothing increases chances of success like contributions! (subtle hint)

On 31 May 2017 at 04:06, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d-announce < digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:

> On 5/30/2017 5:12 AM, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
>
>> Ah, isn't English wonderful. I guess Walter is suffering the inverse of the Calvin & Hobbes "Verbing nouns weirds the language", nouning verbs does weird the language, but only to those who aren't used to that particular nouning of the verb.
>>
>
> Just to clarify, I find that "Compute" is not evocative of "GPU". I read "CUDA by Example" a couple years ago, and even downloaded the CUDA SDK and compiled/ran a simple program on a graphics card. But I never noticed that "Compute" had anything specific to do with GPU programming.
>
> I fear the conversation will go like this, like it has for me:
>
>  N: DCompute
>  W: What's DCompute?
>  N: Enables GPU programming with D
>  W: Cool!
>
> instead of:
>
>  N: D-GPU
>  W: Cool! I can use D to program GPUs!
>
> The problem with the first conversation is W may just move on to the next topic rather than investigate what DCompute is.
>


See, I would have a very different conversation:

 N: DCompute
 M: Awesome, I've been waiting!

instead of:

 N: D-GPU
 M: What's that... is it, like, a rendering library?
 N: No, it's a 'compute' library.
 M: Ohhh, awesome! I've been waiting!

;)