On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 07:56:37 UTC, Andrew Benton wrote:
> E.g. three compilers

Every other compiled language (and a lot of scripting ones) uses the fact of multiple compilers for the language as a sign of adoption and ecosystem growth.

I've only ever seen people complain about D in this area. Never once have I seen someone argue that the existence of PyPy hurts Python or gogcc hurts Go.

On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 10:55:56 UTC, Benny wrote:
> On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 10:35:06 UTC, Benny wrote:
>> Let me say this again
>
> *uch* Never mind this rant. I am just fed up with the issues. I will not post anymore as its just a wast of time for everybody involved.

It's quite easy to tell when criticism is made in good or bad faith, and at this point I'm going to reply to every rant in bad faith on here about how terrible D is with "Post issue numbers" and nothing else. If you have a legitimate problem, make an issue at issues.dlang.org

On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 11:42:14 UTC, Seb wrote:
> On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 10:35:06 UTC, Benny wrote:
>
>> And 3 different installation method's depending on the platform.
>>
>> Windows: DMD installer, LDC manually extract zip and setup path, GDC ...
>
> That's only an issue on Windows.
> For Posix there's the official install.sh script [1].
>
> [1] https://dlang.org/install.html

I've never seen that page. Would've helped me to see it earlier. The D download page should include a blurb with a link to that install page.

I tried going to github.com/dlang/dlang.org, finding the download page, and adding a blurb+link to install.html above those `curl ... install.sh` commands, but that download.dd page is written in a format I'm not familiar with. It's difficult to read, and appears quite clumsy to write as well.

It surprises me that D docs are written in that ddoc macro format --- especially for standalone docs like the download page. I think people unfamiliar with D have a perception of D as being this older language from times past, before C++11, and using ddoc for docs instead of markdown contributes to this perception. Let me know if you'd like help in translating D website and doc pages from ddoc to markdown.

On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 13:54:25 UTC, Jack Stouffer wrote:
> I've only ever seen people complain about D in this area. Never once have I seen someone argue that the existence of PyPy hurts Python or gogcc hurts Go.

Well, I've seen that people think that MS C++ is keeping C++ back because it failed to keep up, so people couldn't write portable code using the latest features...

PyPy and gogcc doesn't hurt Python and Go because the reference interpreters/compilers are mature, stable and cannot take more manpower...

Apples and oranges, does not compare well.

On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 14:22:03 UTC, Jack Stouffer wrote:
> It's quite easy to tell when criticism is made in good or bad faith

Is it?  Why do so many people have problems with it then? Stupidity?

> and at this point I'm going to reply to every rant in bad faith on here about how terrible D is with "Post issue numbers" and nothing else. If you have a legitimate problem, make an issue at issues.dlang.org

Ok, and now you are entering a messy space, define "legitimate"?  I think the most important issue he raised was how project management is either under-communicated or conducted.  Either way he sends a strong signal that he is one person (of many) that D failed to convert even though he was motivated and able. I don't think that is his problem... as he has many other options, but it most certainly could be an indicator of a project challenge.

By neglecting that you also neglect what could be a source for process improvement.  Development processes need continuous improvement. They don't happen by themselves, they need attention throughout the lifespan of the project. It is a matter of priorities, of course, but that is not a question of "legitimate", that is a question of "ranking".

For some reason this ranks below colourful error-messages. I don't know the reasoning behind that ranking, so I am not going to argue whether that is the right priorities, but it _looks_ odd, so something is either under-communicated or maybe he was right about management related issues. I don't know.

Whatever spot D is in right now in comparison to other projects, good or bad, most certainly isn't because of a lack of marketing. Marketing would only bring in more demanding users and more such not "legitimate" issues would be raised.

People expect less friction today than they did 10 years ago. To some extent Microsoft, Google, Jetbrains and others have handed out slick freebies and conditioned programmers to be more demanding. That is the dynamics of the current "market".

On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 11:42:14 UTC, Seb wrote:
> On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 10:35:06 UTC, Benny wrote:
>> * three compilers
>
> Not sure why that's a bad thing. They all have their ups and downs:
>
> - dmd SUPER fast compilation
> - ldc multiarch + good optimization + cross-compilation
> - gdc multiarch + good optimization (in many cases better than LLVM) + cross-compilation + GNU

Off topic, but I'm not aware of _many_ cases, so please let us know whenever you encounter something that GDC optimizes significantly better than LDC.

On 1/31/18 9:13 AM, John Gabriele wrote:
> On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 11:42:14 UTC, Seb wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 10:35:06 UTC, Benny wrote:
>>
>>> And 3 different installation method's depending on the platform.
>>>
>>> Windows: DMD installer, LDC manually extract zip and setup path, GDC ...
>>
>> That's only an issue on Windows.
>> For Posix there's the official install.sh script [1].
>>
>> [1] https://dlang.org/install.html
> 
> I've never seen that page. Would've helped me to see it earlier. The D download page should include a blurb with a link to that install page.
> 
> I tried going to github.com/dlang/dlang.org, finding the download page, and adding a blurb+link to install.html above those `curl ... install.sh` commands, but that download.dd page is written in a format I'm not familiar with. It's difficult to read, and appears quite clumsy to write as well.
> 
> It surprises me that D docs are written in that ddoc macro format --- especially for standalone docs like the download page. I think people unfamiliar with D have a perception of D as being this older language from times past, before C++11, and using ddoc for docs instead of markdown contributes to this perception. Let me know if you'd like help in translating D website and doc pages from ddoc to markdown.

I'm working on adding Markdown support to DDoc. If my changes are accepted it could make these kinds of edits easier, without having to change the whole website at once.

Ages ago I helped redesign the website, which involved messing with DDoc macros. I have to agree that DDoc macros aren't always the friendliest.

On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 16:13:51 UTC, John Gabriele wrote:

> I've never seen that page. Would've helped me to see it earlier. The D download page should include a blurb with a link to that install page.
>
> I tried going to github.com/dlang/dlang.org, finding the download page, and adding a blurb+link to install.html above those `curl ... install.sh` commands, but that download.dd page is written in a format I'm not familiar with. It's difficult to read, and appears quite clumsy to write as well.
>
> It surprises me that D docs are written in that ddoc macro format --- especially for standalone docs like the download page. I think people unfamiliar with D have a perception of D as being this older language from times past, before C++11, and using ddoc for docs instead of markdown contributes to this perception. Let me know if you'd like help in translating D website and doc pages from ddoc to markdown.

You can click "Improve this page" in the upper right corner to make things easier. The INSTALL_SCRIPT macro at the bottom is something I don't have time to dig into, so I filed a bug instead. Shouldn't take long for someone with an understanding of ddoc to make the change.

https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18344

Please add any comments there if my statement/solution are incorrect.

On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 16:13:51 UTC, John Gabriele wrote:
> I've never seen that page. Would've helped me to see it earlier. The D download page should include a blurb with a link to that install page.

They are there - hover over them:

https://imgur.com/a/JvZwI

I submitted it without hovering initially:

https://github.com/dlang/dlang.org/pull/1697

And the install.sh page was added in this PR:

https://github.com/dlang/dlang.org/pull/1936

Please let us know what would help you to find this page quicker.

On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 05:20:59PM +0000, Seb via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 16:13:51 UTC, John Gabriele wrote:
> > I've never seen that page. Would've helped me to see it earlier. The D download page should include a blurb with a link to that install page.
> 
> They are there - hover over them:
> 
> https://imgur.com/a/JvZwI
> 
> I submitted it without hovering initially:
> 
> https://github.com/dlang/dlang.org/pull/1697
> 
> And the install.sh page was added in this PR:
> 
> https://github.com/dlang/dlang.org/pull/1936
> 
> Please let us know what would help you to find this page quicker.

Wow.  I set out *deliberately* looking for that link, and couldn't find it until I looked at your screenshot. I definitely wouldn't have found it if I didn't even know it was there.

I'm no UI consultant, but that link definitely needs to be made more visible.  Is the hover thing really *necessary*?  For something this important, I'd say it's a bad idea to hide it behind a hover (I use keyboard navigation, and so wouldn't even have noticed it, though I concede that I'm a rare case :-P). But then I don't know the original reasoning behind making it hover.


T

-- 
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. -- Elbert Hubbard