On Monday, 24 August 2015 at 18:43:01 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
>
> Following an increasing desire to focus on working on the D language and foundation, I have recently made the difficult decision to part ways with Facebook, my employer of five years and nine months.
>
> [...]

Congrats - Big and difficult decision to come to I'm sure!

Well, Andrei, I expected this. - This is the best, and the most natural way forward. I am 100% The D Foundation is the best direction for D and only good will come from that. You and Facebook can still cooperate in many ways, and perhaps Facebook could become one of the important sponsors, or even foundation members, or just simply foundation partners. Possibilities are endless.

DDev Ltd. (my company) will support the D foundation. The "D" in its name is not just because my name starts with it, but also indicates close relation to the D programming language.

Anyway, I am really happy to see this, and I hope soon we will see a more serious approach to D development similar to Java's JSRs.

Kind regards, and all the best!

On Monday, 24 August 2015 at 18:43:01 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> Following an increasing desire to focus on working on the D language and foundation, I have recently made the difficult decision to part ways with Facebook, my employer of five years and nine months.

Wow, that's some news :-)  Congratulations and much admiration and gratitude for taking such a big step on our behalf.

On 08/24/2015 08:42 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> Following an increasing desire to focus on working on the D language and foundation, I have recently made the difficult decision to part ways with Facebook, my employer of five years and nine months.

Thank you for this very respectable decision.
Let's all work on making this a great decision.

-Martin

Wow! I doff my hat. Please let us know how we can contribute (donations and otherwise) asap.

On Tuesday, 25 August 2015 at 04:32:06 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> Can you elaborate on how you plan to push D forward, other than forming the foundation sooner?

The obvious and most important way is to write code. This will enable me to tackle larger coding tasks such as the collections library. But there are many other tasks that need doing such as community leadership, language definition, writing articles, and more.

> Is there some way we can slap TDPL online in a more accessible format, like a paid blog of some sort if you'd like to keep it generating royalties?  Print and pdfs are such antiquated formats, we can do much better.

I will ask.


Andrei

On Tuesday, 25 August 2015 at 07:49:14 UTC, Muahmmad Adel wrote:
> As far as I know, your title at Facebook was "D evangelist".  When I knew that you moved to Facebook with this title, at first I thought that Facebook was willing to push D forward, with the company's resources and its previous contributions to technology, I thought this would be a similar but a more larger step.

I jokingly self-appointed myself with that title for a short while; Facebook is flexible enough to allow such. My official title there has always been Research Scientist and I've worked on a great deal of varied projects.

> So now I am curious to know details about how you see your work at Facebook conflicting with the way you want to push D forward. For example, Is the company only willing to support D to a limited level? Doesn't the language fulfil the company's technical needs? Do you have conflicting visions towards how things should proceed?
>
> I know this is a question that you cannot give a totally politically correct answer to, but some details would be informative about your vision and / or the company.

There's not much to tell. Facebook is and continues to be a D user, the last project I was working on (and is ongoing) uses D, and there's more use in smaller internal projects. But there is no stronger involvement for the time being.


Andrei

On Tuesday, 25 August 2015 at 04:32:06 UTC, Joakim wrote:

> Is there some way we can slap TDPL online in a more accessible format, like a paid blog of some sort if you'd like to keep it generating royalties?  Print and pdfs are such antiquated formats, we can do much better.

How about something like this. Package the D compiler plus dub and TDPL together and sell it for $99. Then those of us using it for work-related purposes can ask our employers to purchase it for us.

On Monday, 24 August 2015 at 18:43:01 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
>
> Following an increasing desire to focus on working on the D language and foundation, I have recently made the difficult decision to part ways with Facebook, my employer of five years and nine months.
>
> Facebook has impacted my career and life very positively, and I am grateful to have been a part of it for this long. The time has come for me, however, to fully focus on pushing D forward. As sorry I am for leaving a good and secure career behind, I am excited many times over about the great challenges and opportunities going forward.
>
> Next step with the D Language Foundation is a formal talk with the foundation's prospective attorney tomorrow. I hope to get the foundation in motion as soon as possible, though I'm told there are numerous steps to complete. I will keep this forum posted about progress.
>
> I'm also glad to announce that the D Language Foundation already has a donor - I have decided to contribute my books' royalties to it. I encourage others to respond in kind.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Andrei

> [...]

Wow! Full respect to you Andrei. You are a real role model to this community and developers everywhere.

Indeed reading your books on C++ is the reason I started using Dlang and it's clear that you and Walter are going to ensure a long and bright future for the language and the community.

On 24-Aug-2015 21:42, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
>
> Following an increasing desire to focus on working on the D language and
> foundation, I have recently made the difficult decision to part ways
> with Facebook, my employer of five years and nine months.
>
> Facebook has impacted my career and life very positively, and I am
> grateful to have been a part of it for this long. The time has come for
> me, however, to fully focus on pushing D forward. As sorry I am for
> leaving a good and secure career behind, I am excited many times over
> about the great challenges and opportunities going forward.

Thank you for making this tough choice for all of us. Combined with the recent DDMD announcement this weeks turns out to be a huge milestone for the D community.

It's sure getting only more exciting in the D world from now on.

-- 
Dmitry Olshansky