== Quote from Jari-Matti_Mäkelä (jmjmak@utu.fi.invalid)'s article
> Well, it's a bit early to talk about 2.0 now. There is a truckload of stuff scattered around. Some ideas can be found from the D poll, some other things are on the D wiki, ...

Right. For example, some information about future plans is on the official comment page for "Future Directions": http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?DocComments/Future

Knud Sørensen wrote:
> On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 20:58:10 -0500, clayasaurus wrote:
> 
>> Knud Sørensen wrote:
>>> What about the library contest I suggested long ago ?? Is that a useful idea?
>>> I did never get much feedback on that idea. 
>>>
>>> http://all-technology.com/eigenpolls/dwishlist/index.php?it=59
>>>
>> This is a great idea. I think Walter just needs to encourage library competition while giving good libraries recognition.
>>
>> How about a "Top 10 D libraries" page on digitalmars D where the D community votes for the top 10 libraries each month on the newsgroups and then they get a very special recognition on the digitalmars site?
> 
> Yes, a monthly competition like this is also a good idea.
> 
> We have several authors on the list maybe we can get them to donate a copy of one of there books for a first prize.

I've thought about cash prizes and contests. I just had the nagging feeling that the result would be a circus rather than serious development.

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 14:09:07 -0400, Walter Bright <newshound@digitalmars.com> wrote:

> I've thought about cash prizes and contests. I just had the nagging feeling that the result would be a circus rather than serious development.

I keep my clown costume nearby!

Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> Walter-Bottleneck, and although I admire his vigorous and persistent work, I think eventually we will have to open up the D development process more. 

I'm afraid I agree. (Disclaimer: my agreement on this is not to be construed as a statement of Walter not being an inhuman coder!)

> Most successful other languages and projects have teams of developers working on them (either corporate funded, or open-source communities), and as D matures I think we too will have to bring more manpower into the core tools to become competitive. The idea of a one-man army is inspirational, but I don't think it's very realistic.

The way I see it, we do have enough capable coders. Problem is, we really have not one single example on record of getting the focus and coherence right. In other words, with this crowd, we _should_ have been able to resolve the GUI issue already, and the standard library should also have been written and finished ages ago.

I'm not talking more work per programmer, I'm just stating that we're doing duplicate work, useless work, irrelevant work, and in general ill planned work -- seen from the point of view of the end-result, that is.

But don't blame it on us programmers alone. Or Walter. What we really need at this point is Leaders. Guys who don't even have to be code writers themselves, just guys who can pull together a team and keep the aim crystal clear.

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 11:09:07 -0700, Walter Bright wrote:


>> 
>> We have several authors on the list maybe we can get them to donate a copy of one of there books for a first prize.
> 
> I've thought about cash prizes and contests. I just had the nagging feeling that the result would be a circus rather than serious development.

Yes, part of it will be a circus, that one of the points of a contest. To attract people and show how good D is performing.

Some libraries might not be serious developed, but I think that the top libraries will be.

And a few good libraries might be worth all the circus.

If you look at history many excellent developments have been the results of competitions:

The X price: we got a private developed spaceship.
Clay institute millennium problems: Several problems had had more progress
since the announcement that any other period in time.

"Walter Bright" <newshound@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:eh0hgs$q8h$1@digitaldaemon.com...

> I'm happy to merge things in, but am reluctant to do so without reviewing the diffs line by line.

That's what we have now. I think it's time for you to let go of Phobos. There can't be a community lead standard library from which you take patches to include into DMD's distribution. We'd end up with another Ares.

Honestly, I don't think this Phobos review process can go on for much longer. Phobos should be hosted on dsource/sourceforge and its latest release should be included with each DMD/GDC release. You'll be one of the few with write rights, of course ;)

L.

John Reimer wrote:
> On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 23:55:55 -0700, Walter Bright wrote:
>> John Reimer wrote:
>>
>>> Shame on you, Walter.  You should know better than to think you
>>> have that much influence. ;D
>>
>> If I'm not going to actively manage something, it's best not to get  involved with it, as such tends to discourage others from taking the  lead on it. They assume I will.
> 
> Understood.
> 
>>> The momentum died for strictly different reasons (most notable
>>> being the lack of contributors).
>>
>> Lack of contributors is why most things wither. The more interesting  question is why the lack of contributors. I had (incorrectly) thought  that endorsing DWT would lead to more contributors and a more  concentrated effort to get it done. The opposite seemed to happen.
> 
> Good question.  I never quite figured that one out either.  I guess, like  others have said, SWT, as powerful as it is, just isn't that popular.

Dunno about others, but, IIRC, at the time it felt labourious to use, and non-portable. Thus, such an Official choice was, ehh, depressing.

>>> Your choice and timing just
>>> happened to be off on the matter. Okay, I admit that there was one
>>> other significant issue that was a personal annoyance: you failed
>>> to contact or discuss /anything/ with the people considering the
>>> ports of DWT (myself, Carlos ). You just announced the ports and
>>> that we were doing them (even though you had no idea what are
>>> personal feelings on the matter were or how serious we were about
>>> it).  I recall being quite shocked at your announcement. I think
>>> Carlos was too.
>>
>> I'm sorry about that. I had incorrectly just assumed you'd be pleased by  it. I wanted to support you guys' efforts.
> 
> Ah, I forgive you.  I thank you for trying to support our efforts even if  it didn't work out quite right.
> 
>>> Regardless, we all know that GUI Frameworks are particularly
>>> troublesome to endorse since the area is so subjective.  It's
>>> probably a lost cause trying to support one over the other.  Best
>>> to encourage any GUI that people are willing to develop for D
>>> because I don't think any one framework will be acceptable as a
>>> standard.
>>
>> That's where we're at now. There are several D gui's, too many for this  community to really support properly.
> 
> I'm not so sure there are too many GUI's to support properly.  I think it doesn't matter how many or few there are.

When I moved from VIC-20 to Kaypro-II, I had to switch from 6502 assembler to either Z-80 assembler or 8080 assembler. (Both were used "interchangeably" on the Z-80 on the Kaypro. And I didn't want to use both.) In hindsight, I spent so much time dithering between the two, that merely a toss of a coin at the start would have made the end result much happier. The same thing happened with Basic. On the VIC, I only had [a primitive version of] Microsoft Basic, whereas on the Kaypro, I had 2 versions of M$ interpreted Basic, a truly compiled basic ("C-basic"), and a (Java like) compiled but still interpreted Basic ("S-basic"). I couldn't make up my mind. (Today, I'd have used each of them for separate purposes. :-) ) The dithering didn't stop until a friend gave me a stolen copy of Turbo Pascal, v.2. (And yes, I've since repaid my debt to Borland several times beyond my legal obligations!)

>>> As for standard libraries, I think you should be ready to endorse
>>> an organized effort

...

>> I encourage, and have encouraged, anyone who wants to do this. Any or  all parts of Phobos can be used as a starting point. The compiler is my  central focus, to enable great libraries to be written.

In the last years I've heard people ask and ask about this all over again. It's almost like people wanted to be asking till they get a no for an answer.

> Thank you for stating that here.  It's very much appreciated, as is all of  your work.  I know you've stated it in so many words before, but sometimes  repitition seems to be the only way to get things across in a newsgroup  where posts quickly get lost in the pile.

By this time somebody simply ought to just go ahead and set up the repository.
Like Nike: "just do it"!

Lionello Lunesu wrote:
> Don Clugston wrote:
> 
>> Georg Wrede wrote:
>>
>>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>>
>>>> What I'm mindful of is I endorsed DWT as the official D gui library, which promptly killed it.
>>>
>>>
>>> IMHO, more important than having an official GUI library, would be to actually have _something_ right inside dmd.zip!
>>>
>>> It doesn't have to be the world and the kitchen sink, but anybody downloading dmd.zip should be able to write a GUI hello world simply and easily.
>>
>>
>> At the very least, include the full set of Windows .lib files from the latest SDK, so that at least it's possible to do SDK programming.
> 
> 
> Don't forget the implementation of WinMain that has to be copied in each win32 D project :(
> 
> I wish dmd would include a higher-level entry point for win32 GUI apps. Perhaps just "int main(char[][])" but with a flag to make it a GUI app (like bud/build has, but actually including the GC init/deinit, etc).

For a compiler + lib distributor, it shouldn't be that hard to _decide_ that the novice user _should_ be able to write his First GUI Hello World simply with something like:

import std.gui;

void GUImain()
{
    gui.Window w = new gui.DefaultAppWindow();
    gui.Text t = "Hello World";
    t.attach(w);
    w.pack();

    w.eventLoop();
}

And this would be the same on _all_ the supported platforms. Straight outta shrink-wrap.

Hey Knud,
can you check your computer's clock? Your posts are arriving 6 or so hours
before you send them. :-)

-- 
Derek Parnell
Melbourne, Australia
"Down with mediocrity!"

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 11:03:14 -0700, Walter Bright wrote:

> I'm happy to merge things in, but am reluctant to do so without reviewing the diffs line by line.

Actually, when I wrote "take Phobos", I really meant "take Phobos". You would no longer have *the* sole controlling vote on what goes in or goes out of phobos, nor would you have sole control over when new libraries were released for general consumptuion. They would in fact be released asynchonously from DMD. There would be 'beta' versions around for trying our stuff and official releases for people who just needed a standard library. Are you willing to give up control of Phobos?

-- 
Derek Parnell
Melbourne, Australia
"Down with mediocrity!"