On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 14:45:37 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> On Friday, 26 December 2014 at 01:11:42 UTC, Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> Many bug reports and case studies, and often, a persistent voice for
>> minority issues that don't get enough attention. My time spent arguing
>> in this forum is substantial, and as annoying as it may seem, I think
>> if I didn't invest that time, there are things in the past 5-6 years
>> that would have moved in a different direction, and the language would
>> be less attractive to me and my industry as a result.
>
> Yes, I am doing pretty much the same. Does that mean I should be more friendly to your lobby of your industry/projects if it directly harms my interests? I have been supporting your push for better low-level control because it helps me too, not because I am kind person. Wasting effort of core contributors on a toolchain I will never use is against my interests and makes me naturally hostile about it.
>
>> No, I'm not a compiler dev, and I feel like you're trying to discredit
>> me because I'm not.
>
> It is exactly what I am trying to do and I am not hiding it.
>
>> I don't want to be a compiler dev. I want to *use* D to make my life
>> and work easier for my numerous existing projects and commercial
>> activity.
>
> I wish I could do the same - I have never wanted to read compiler sources or be part of Phobos dev team. But I do recognize it is the only pragmatical way to make things work as per my needs and it is better to act according to how things are, not how things should have been.
>
>> No other language community has ever demanded I contribute to the
>> compiler to be eligible to have my case considered relevant.
>
> It is not about relevance but about priority. If you are willing to wait for something like 10 years it will surely be addressed at some point. But you demand it being addressed soon, right?
>
> And yes, D is probably least staffed language development project among non-hobby projects.
>
>> If I contributed code to DMD, I know it will become my life, and that
>> means I'm stepping away from my existing interests and areas of
>> development. I'm not interested in doing that.
>
> Then you will have to wait until someone appears who have same interests as you but IS willing to start contributing.
>
>> Surely you can understand that my desire to *use* D as a tool is not
>> at odds with my desire to continue to work in the fields that I prefer
>> to work in?
>
> I am simply telling that D is not ready to be used in your industry if you are adamant about such desire. Sad but true. And by complaining you don't improve situation as a whole but simply force redistribution of already existing set of limited resources.
>
>>> I keep asking you simple question you avoid answering - who personally
>>> should work to address your concerns? Those are all legit concerns and I
>>> doubt anyone would willingly prefer to keep things as they are. But who will
>>> do it if apparently you are the person who needs it most and you don't want
>>> to do it?
>>
>> Any of the existing dev's that particularly care about the long-term
>> success of the language and the health of the ecosystem?
>> Perhaps new dev's will be attracted by making the ecosystem inclusive
>> of their work and development practice. That tends to be the way open
>> source works no?
>
> No, not really. Open source is about people working to fulfill their own personal goals and not minding to share resulting code if it doesn't mean much added effort. Only few care about things like long-term success and only tiny minority will be interested in working on ecosystem they don't use.
>
> Motivation you speak about has its place but it is more of a "luxury" contribution that only happens after primary concerns are dealt with. It just happens that if some open-source project is big and mature enough there is a very high chance that your problems are already addressed by someone else. That gives a wrong impression to those who mostly use open-source and rarely contribute.
>
>> I'm glad you work on the compiler, the community needs people like you
>> more than anyone...
>
> I don't really work on compiler, sorry :)
>
>> although I'm not sure about your attitude. Right
>> now, I'm finding it quite corrosive.
>
> Being all kind and nice is not really in my skill set. I hope I have explained better my dislike for this specific set of complaints despite the fact I usually tend to support your cause.

This is probably the most disgusting, selfish and deluded posts i've read on this entire newsgroup.

If D is supposed to supplant C/C++, then the needs of those users *must* be met, especially without deriding those very users. Just because you work on the D ecosystem does not give you 'carte blanche' to tell a user to stop making enquiries into features that are promised by D.

The user is the entire goal of D! Forgetting this relegates D to obscurity and makes you look like an ass.

> No, not really. Open source is about people working to fulfill their own personal goals and not minding to share resulting code if it doesn't mean much added effort. Only few care about things like long-term success and only tiny minority will be interested in working on ecosystem they don't use.

With that paragraph, you've just dumped on Walter, Andrei's and all other open source contributor's efforts for the past n years!

On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 15:18:57 UTC, Gary Willoughby wrote:
> This is probably the most disgusting, selfish and deluded posts i've read on this entire newsgroup.

I am pretty sure I have written worse.

> If D is supposed to supplant C/C++, then the needs of those users *must* be met, especially without deriding those very users. Just because you work on the D ecosystem does not give you 'carte blanche' to tell a user to stop making enquiries into features that are promised by D.
>
> The user is the entire goal of D! Forgetting this relegates D to obscurity and makes you look like an ass.

This is widely advertised statement I can't agree with. For me goal is having working language that works. Getting users is indirect way to achieve that by attracting more contributions but user just by itself has not value to _me_. It is obviously important for Andrei and Walter as D is their project. There are some other contributors which keep being productive despite no obvious personal gain. I admire and respect them but I am not them.

And I really hate the culture of hiding own interests just to look all nice.

>> No, not really. Open source is about people working to fulfill their own personal goals and not minding to share resulting code if it doesn't mean much added effort. Only few care about things like long-term success and only tiny minority will be interested in working on ecosystem they don't use.
>
> With that paragraph, you've just dumped on Walter, Andrei's and all other open source contributor's efforts for the past n years!

How so? Walter and Andrei are not open-source contributors - D is _their_ project. There are some incredible open-source contributors like Kenji, Martin, Vladimir, Daniel - guys with incredible productivity that don't mind help anyone. This is exactly the (awesome) minority. But most people just work on projects they are interested in and occasionally contribute stuff back.

Do you disagree that this is the model of D developer community? Or am I the ass because I write it down here instead of acting all idealistic and inspirational?

On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 15:18:57 UTC, Gary Willoughby wrote:
> This is probably the most disgusting, selfish and deluded posts i've read on this entire newsgroup.
>
> If D is supposed to supplant C/C++, then the needs of those users *must* be met, especially without deriding those very users. Just because you work on the D ecosystem does not give you 'carte blanche' to tell a user to stop making enquiries into features that are promised by D.
>
> The user is the entire goal of D! Forgetting this relegates D to obscurity and makes you look like an ass.
>
>> No, not really. Open source is about people working to fulfill their own personal goals and not minding to share resulting code if it doesn't mean much added effort. Only few care about things like long-term success and only tiny minority will be interested in working on ecosystem they don't use.
>
> With that paragraph, you've just dumped on Walter, Andrei's and all other open source contributor's efforts for the past n years!

I strongly disagree.  Dicebot's post is completely true, describing exactly how open source projects actually work, instead of some idealized notion of "Open source it and they will come!"  I think some people have unrealistic expectations of open source after the success of past large projects like the linux kernel, gcc, clang, Qt, etc., all of which had heavy commercial support from IBM, Red Hat, Apple, Trolltech/Nokia and so on.  D has not reached that stage of commercial support yet, so the expectation that good Windows tooling and support will just magically appear is unrealistic, particularly for free.

You are right that the user's needs will ultimately have to be met for D to ever take off to the next level, but I don't recall anyone ever "promising" a good Windows debugging experience, docs that you can learn the language from, or widespread Windows support for D libraries.  D is a community project: Manu can note those deficiencies, but as Dicebot said, unless someone wants to work on them or like-minded users pay for someone to do it, the community will generally not just do what he wants.

Saying that Dicebot's valid point, that everybody has different goals from open source and most only care about their narrow use case, is dumping on Walter and Andrei's efforts is going off the deep end a bit.  I'm sure they are very aware of this reality, and are thankful for the few steady contributors they have.

On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 16:07:59 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> I strongly disagree.  Dicebot's post is completely true, describing exactly how open source projects actually work,

No Dicebot described how open source projects *start*, big difference.

I don't want to get into a massive argument here, but viewing users as an inconvenience when developing a project that is (in it's very essence) supposed to be used by them, is a self defeating attitude and will ultimately lead to no-one using it.

On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 16:19:35 UTC, Gary Willoughby wrote:
> On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 16:07:59 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> I strongly disagree.  Dicebot's post is completely true, describing exactly how open source projects actually work,
>
> No Dicebot described how open source projects *start*, big difference.
>
> I don't want to get into a massive argument here, but viewing users as an inconvenience when developing a project that is (in it's very essence) supposed to be used by them, is a self defeating attitude and will ultimately lead to no-one using it.

That is a nice platitude, and one that I actually agreed with above and in general, but who is actually going to do the painstaking work that Windows tooling would require?  That is what Dicebot is getting at.

If anybody cared about good Windows debugging support or getting vibe.d working flawlessly on Windows, they'd have done it already.  Now, Manu might bring more attention to those issues through his post and someone may decide to work on them as a result- it has already spurred Walter to try and improve the phobos docs- which is why I have no problem with his criticism.

But Dicebot is right that "users" are not the concern of those outside a small core who contribute to D.  Most contributors are just scratching their own itch, and users are just potential suckers who might add other features I want. ;)

Also, even companies have to prioritize: they cannot just do whatever the user asks for.  Open source projects, which are usually much more resource-constrained, have to prioritize much more.  The features Manu asks for have not been deemed priorities.  The open source advantage is that the developer pool is potentially much wider, so someone out there may want the same features Manu wants and be willing to implement them.

On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 16:33:05 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> If anybody cared about good Windows debugging support or getting vibe.d working flawlessly on Windows, they'd have done it already.  Now, Manu might bring more attention to those issues through his post and someone may decide to work on them as a result- it has already spurred Walter to try and improve the phobos docs- which is why I have no problem with his criticism.

Criticism about documentation is actually very well-placed - it is an issue that affects everyone, can be fixed in small chunks and does not require huge effort investment for each chunk. No one loses, everyone wins, yay!

On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 14:45:37 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> Wasting effort of core contributors on a toolchain I will
> never use is against my interests and makes me naturally
> hostile about it.

I don't think it needs to be a zero-sum game.  Removing blockers to entry can make an orders-of-magnitude difference in the number of users for a particular platform, and when you gain users, you gain developers.  Paying now to remove basic usability issues could well free up a lot of core contributor time in future, by opening a door for Windows devs that makes it worth their while to invest effort into the language and its toolchain.

On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 16:33:05 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> But Dicebot is right that "users" are not the concern of those outside a small core who contribute to D.  Most contributors are just scratching their own itch, and users are just potential suckers who might add other features I want. ;)

*Stunned*

On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 17:57:42 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> I don't think it needs to be a zero-sum game.  Removing blockers to entry can make an orders-of-magnitude difference in the number of users for a particular platform, and when you gain users, you gain developers.  Paying now to remove basic usability issues could well free up a lot of core contributor time in future, by opening a door for Windows devs that makes it worth their while to invest effort into the language and its toolchain.

Yes, this is how i see things.

On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 15:34:44 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 15:18:57 UTC, Gary Willoughby wrote:
>> This is probably the most disgusting, selfish and deluded posts i've read on this entire newsgroup.
>
> I am pretty sure I have written worse.

Time out, everyone.  I really don't see any benefit to throwing around any more personalized criticism; it achieves nothing other than demotivation.

> This is widely advertised statement I can't agree with. For me goal is having working language that works. Getting users is indirect way to achieve that by attracting more contributions but user just by itself has not value to _me_.

An indirect benefit is still a benefit -- as I said in my previous post, these things aren't a zero-sum game.  Among other things, more users means not only the likelihood of more contributions, but also more bugs and points of failure identified, more experienced people to use as a sounding board for ideas, more people to call on for help when you have a problem, and so on.

> And I really hate the culture of hiding own interests just to look all nice.

It's fine to be self-interested, but it is important to know where your _real_ self-interest lies, and that usually involves looking out for the interests of others too. :-)

> How so? Walter and Andrei are not open-source contributors - D is _their_ project.

I think the better line to draw here is between project leadership and community contributions -- after all, everyone is contributing open source code here.

> Do you disagree that this is the model of D developer community? Or am I the ass because I write it down here instead of acting all idealistic and inspirational?

I think there is a lot of misunderstanding arising here, because I think you are saying "I think this is how things actually work in practice" (arguable in the case of D, but probably true for many open source projects) and that's being mistaken for "I think this is how things ought to work."

I guess what I'd say is that, yes, I get how the idealistic and inspirational stuff can be irritating and feel like delusion, but it can be a pretty powerful tool to help facilitate the process of cooperation between different people who do indeed all have different itches to scratch.  Being "nice" isn't just a matter of being liked or not (not the most important thing in the world); it's a really handy means of minimizing the amount of unnecessary friction in a community.  It doesn't need to involve any rose-tinted spectacles or illusions about people's motivations, just a recognition of what is going to help promote positive or negative reactions from other people.

On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 18:42:17 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 15:34:44 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
>> This is widely advertised statement I can't agree with. For me goal is having working language that works. Getting users is indirect way to achieve that by attracting more contributions but user just by itself has not value to _me_.
>
> An indirect benefit is still a benefit -- as I said in my previous post, these things aren't a zero-sum game.  Among other things, more users means not only the likelihood of more contributions, but also more bugs and points of failure identified, more experienced people to use as a sounding board for ideas, more people to call on for help when you have a problem, and so on.

It also means more people asking for stuff, then doing nothing to contribute towards it, as though the D community is their slave labor.  Not saying this about Manu, just that there are people with weird expectations of open source.

> I guess what I'd say is that, yes, I get how the idealistic and inspirational stuff can be irritating and feel like delusion, but it can be a pretty powerful tool to help facilitate the process of cooperation between different people who do indeed all have different itches to scratch.  Being "nice" isn't just a matter of being liked or not (not the most important thing in the world); it's a really handy means of minimizing the amount of unnecessary friction in a community.  It doesn't need to involve any rose-tinted spectacles or illusions about people's motivations, just a recognition of what is going to help promote positive or negative reactions from other people.

I'll add that a majority of contributors do not solely scratch their own itches, but contribute in other ways that do not directly benefit them.  Maybe that's because there are indirect benefits to having better docs, or they just become invested in the project over time.  Very few operate solely from self-interest, though most probably contribute a majority of their work for that reason.