So far, getting content for the blog has, with a few exceptions, been a process of sending out emails prompted by activity on my radar. This is no problem when it comes to project highlights or other fairly broad topics, but it's highly inefficient for ginning up technical posts on the implementation of specific algorithms, or optimization details, or how a D feature prevented a nuclear meltdown.

I want to publish more posts like Andreas's 'Find Was Too Damn Slow, So We Fixed It` [1] (which, by the way, is the most-viewed post so far, just ahead of Joakim's interview with Walter [2]), or Steven's 'How to Write @trusted Code in D' [3], but I need help.

If you, or someone you know, have done something interesting with an algorithm or optimization in D, or have used a D idiom to do things in a way that pleasantly surprised you, please let me know. If I think it's something we can work with, I'll help you in putting together a guest post, or something like I do with the project highlights (where I build a post around whatever info you give me).

Also, I need news. If you see or hear any D news anywhere outside of the forums -- new projects, research papers, usage at a company, a game using D -- please drop me a line. I'll either get a post together for it or make sure Adam knows about it for 'This Week in D'.

I'm also open to ideas for other types of posts, like project highlights, but I'd really like more of the technical stuff. Please send any suggestions to aldacron@gmail.com.

Thanks!

[1] http://dlang.org/blog/2016/06/16/find-was-too-damn-slow-so-we-fixed-it/
[2] http://dlang.org/blog/2016/08/30/ruminations-on-d-an-interview-with-walter-bright/
[3] http://dlang.org/blog/2016/09/28/how-to-write-trusted-code-in-d/

On 10/30/2016 08:51 PM, Mike Parker wrote:
> So far, getting content for the blog has, with a few exceptions, been a
> process of sending out emails prompted by activity on my radar.

Thank you and please continue doing that. I would have never thought of contributing to the blog if you hadn't contacted me with an idea.d

I have an article request for anyone who is considering writing something, which was prompted by a recent thread[1]. There are many functions in Phobos that can be used for searching and parsing: The ones in std.algorighm like find, findSplit, splitter, etc.; a few in std.range like some members of SortedRange; some in std.array like split; some in std.string like indexOf; and of course std.regex; and more...

It's likely that some of those are redundant or less efficient compared to others. There must be some simple guidelines to prefer one over the others. I would enjoy reading such an article. :)

Ali

[1] http://forum.dlang.org/thread/iygdxteveaykhiauosko@forum.dlang.org

On Monday, 31 October 2016 at 03:51:16 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
>
> If you, or someone you know, have done something interesting with an algorithm or optimization in D, or have used a D idiom to do things in a way that pleasantly surprised you, please let me know. If I think it's something we can work with, I'll help you in putting together a guest post, or something like I do with the project highlights (where I build a post around whatever info you give me).
>

No fantastic story-telling there, but feel free to pick any content from https://p0nce.github.io/d-idioms/

On 2016-10-31 04:51, Mike Parker wrote:
> So far, getting content for the blog has, with a few exceptions, been a
> process of sending out emails prompted by activity on my radar. This is
> no problem when it comes to project highlights or other fairly broad
> topics, but it's highly inefficient for ginning up technical posts on
> the implementation of specific algorithms, or optimization details, or
> how a D feature prevented a nuclear meltdown.

Would it be interesting to have a blog post about implement support for Objective-C in D? That would be very technical and quite low level.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Monday, 31 October 2016 at 20:29:13 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:

>
> Would it be interesting to have a blog post about implement support for Objective-C in D? That would be very technical and quite low level.

Absolutely!

On Monday, 31 October 2016 at 10:02:16 UTC, Guillaume Piolat wrote:

>
> No fantastic story-telling there, but feel free to pick any content from https://p0nce.github.io/d-idioms/

If there's a backstory behind any of them, that would be great. I need more than just a blurb. I'm planning to make a handful of posts over the next few months on how some specific dub commands have helped me in certain situations. I'd love something similar for some of the idioms in your list. I'm sure you could put together an interesting post about your GC-destructor-detection trick.

On Tuesday, 1 November 2016 at 06:23:29 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
> On Monday, 31 October 2016 at 20:29:13 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>
>>
>> Would it be interesting to have a blog post about implement support for Objective-C in D? That would be very technical and quite low level.
>
> Absolutely!

I could write something about the CTFE engine.
And how I plan to beat the llvm jit :)

On Monday, 31 October 2016 at 07:00:05 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:
> On 10/30/2016 08:51 PM, Mike Parker wrote:
> > So far, getting content for the blog has, with a few
> exceptions, been a
> > process of sending out emails prompted by activity on my
> radar.
>
> Thank you and please continue doing that. I would have never thought of contributing to the blog if you hadn't contacted me with an idea.d

I intend to! I scrounge for ideas every three or four weeks, then send emails out in batches and cross my fingers waiting for responses. That so far has enabled me to build up a nice little queue of posts, most of which actually materialize. It's just a matter of doing it, something that is increasingly taking more time. The absence of a post last week was because the queue run out without me sending out a new round of emails to build it back up and not writing a fallback post to fill in the gap. I let myself get distracted by a side project and preparation for NaNoWriMo. I'm hoping my plea here will help reduce the likelihood of that happening again anytime soon.

On Monday, 31 October 2016 at 03:51:16 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
> I want to publish more posts like Andreas's 'Find Was Too Damn Slow, So We Fixed It` [1] (which, by the way, is the most-viewed post so far, just ahead of Joakim's interview with Walter [2]), or Steven's 'How to Write @trusted Code in D' [3], but I need help.

> [1] http://dlang.org/blog/2016/06/16/find-was-too-damn-slow-so-we-fixed-it/
> [2] http://dlang.org/blog/2016/08/30/ruminations-on-d-an-interview-with-walter-bright/
> [3] http://dlang.org/blog/2016/09/28/how-to-write-trusted-code-in-d/

I take that as a compliment. Thanks! The rest of you, take that as a challenge. ;)

What I would like to read about would be LuaD [4] or ctRegex [5], because they are great demos of CTFE.

The auto-tester would be worth an article as well. Not about the implementation details, but about its features and the PR workflow.

Also, some embedded D use like kernel or freestanding stuff.

None of these are "I fixed something in D" though. Hm, Taking a look through the recent 072 changelog, I found two items which could be worth a story:

* std.range.padLeft and std.range.padRight were added (if someone can write comedy and wants to take some jabs at the Javascript leftPad story)
* std.range.generate fixed to be a proper range (I remember some heated discussion about the semantics of front)


[4] http://jakobovrum.github.io/LuaD/
[5] https://dlang.org/phobos/std_regex.html#.ctRegex

On Tuesday, 1 November 2016 at 06:36:15 UTC, Stefan Koch wrote:
> On Tuesday, 1 November 2016 at 06:23:29 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
>> On Monday, 31 October 2016 at 20:29:13 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Would it be interesting to have a blog post about implement support for Objective-C in D? That would be very technical and quite low level.
>>
>> Absolutely!
>
> I could write something about the CTFE engine.
> And how I plan to beat the llvm jit :)

I'd be very interested in such a post. And it would provide some good publicity for D.