On Saturday, June 30, 2018 02:08:08 Joakim via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> Simple, D is a collective effort. If the core team wants to waste one of its key funding sources in getting a bunch of hobbyists together in a room showing off to each other then going on a European vacation, completely ignoring how the world and tech has changed from back when that could actually be worthwhile, that signals to me and others that D is not a serious effort to build a viable programming language. Such an egregious waste of resources signals that this is just a bunch of boys having fun with their toys, only now out on the town in Europe.
>
> I'm not saying that was the intent all along: I suspect that like most people and institutions, DConf simply blindly aped what was done in the past, which is why conferences still happen. However, I'm now presenting arguments for why that doesn't make sense and why that outdated ritual is dying off, as Marco notes, and if the response is merely, "That's the way things have been done and we'll just keep doing it regardless," well, congrats, you just explained the thinking for why C and C++ will never be displaced by D.

The response is that those of us who have gone to dconf have found it to be valuable. It's not just that we're doing what others have done or that we think that it might be a good idea. It's actually been valuable in practice.

Honestly, this is this first time that I've ever seen anyone try to argue that conferences like this are a bad idea. My experience has been that it has been a very good idea, and there are plenty of people out there who attend conferences regularly and try to get others to go because of how much value they see in it (and not just for dconf). If anything, the number of conferences that I've been hearing about has gone up, not down, and plenty of new conferences have started up in recent years (e.g. BSD Taiwan started up last year, the OpenZFS guys have started up a at least a couple of related conferences in the last few years, and RustConf is quite new). If you think that it's a bad sign that we have dconf, then that's certainly your choice, but the arguments that you've presented are unlikely to be persuasive to those of us who have actually attended dconf.

- Jonathan M Davis

On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 02:23:57 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Saturday, June 30, 2018 02:08:08 Joakim via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> [...]
>
> The response is that those of us who have gone to dconf have found it to be valuable. It's not just that we're doing what others have done or that we think that it might be a good idea. It's actually been valuable in practice.
>
> Honestly, this is this first time that I've ever seen anyone try to argue that conferences like this are a bad idea. My experience has been that it has been a very good idea, and there are plenty of people out there who attend conferences regularly and try to get others to go because of how much value they see in it (and not just for dconf). If anything, the number of conferences that I've been hearing about has gone up, not down, and plenty of new conferences have started up in recent years (e.g. BSD Taiwan started up last year, the OpenZFS guys have started up a at least a couple of related conferences in the last few years, and RustConf is quite new). If you think that it's a bad sign that we have dconf, then that's certainly your choice, but the arguments that you've presented are unlikely to be persuasive to those of us who have actually attended dconf.

That's nice, but since you present no arguments other than simply stating that it's "valuable" or "a very good idea" that's "gone up"- why? who knows? That would require actually supplying an argument- the 99.9% of D users who've never attended Dconf are unlikely to be persuaded that it's ever worth attending DConf or wasting any more time with a language that is more focused on blowing time and money on that outdated conference format than getting work done on the language.

On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 02:23:57 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> Honestly, this is this first time that I've ever seen anyone try to argue that conferences like this are a bad idea.

I argued it (though I don't remember how vigorously) back when the kickstarter was done. I still think there's far more useful things we could have spent that money on.

So, I literally just got home - as in about 20 minutes ago - from a work trip, an organization-wide retreat that consumed this whole week (and btw a LOT of money). I'll grant there was some value in the powerpoint presentations, but they were a tiny minority of the time.

The "talks" of this week were frequently intercut with questions, comments, arguments. The plan included various break-out sessions that mixed people across teams that don't usually mix in order to share more and see the other perspectives.

And, of course, before 9 and after 5, were the parts that most people felt were most valuable, just kinda hanging out and yes, even doing a little bit of work.

Overall, I'm actually still not sure it was worth the time and money that went into it... but there's a good case to be made that it was, even limiting it to just the 9-5 parts. But there were a few people saying they think it would have been more worth it if we cut out even more of the structure, to make the 9-5 more resemble the 5-9.



So when we criticize dconf, it is because the official time is devoted almost entirely to the most useless part of a meeting - the powerpoint presentations. (Like you could have just emailed that to me.)

And the powerpoints themselves btw are frequently trash. Really, the point of a talk like this is to market something - get people interested enough to read your book or use your project or whatever. Reading text or code off a slide is really pretty pointless, again, you could have just emailed that to me.



But anyway, if we are going to get people together, why not focus on the together aspects? Instead of having a traditional talk, try doing 5 minutes of talk to market interest in the idea, followed by 20 minutes of break-out interactive groups to collaboratively explore it, followed by conference share-outs and questions from those groups to the whole. And mix up the groups too. We did a fair amount of this at my work thing this week and I actually thought it worked fairly well. I actually rarely even had my computer out all week - we can youtube and email and IRC some other time, while in person, let's in person stuff.

Instead of having another talk immediately follow, just have some... together time. Make the lunch break 3 hours long instead of 1, so people have more of a chance to mingle and organically collaborate. You say the best part is what happens after the conference... so let's try to bring that after-conference stuff TO the conference itself!


If we're going to spend the money, let's not spend it on more powerpoints. Let's emphasize the parts you already like better, and actually focus on the unique benefits of in-person time.

On Saturday, June 30, 2018 02:34:00 Joakim via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 02:23:57 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> > On Saturday, June 30, 2018 02:08:08 Joakim via Digitalmars-d
> >
> > wrote:
> >> [...]
> >
> > The response is that those of us who have gone to dconf have found it to be valuable. It's not just that we're doing what others have done or that we think that it might be a good idea. It's actually been valuable in practice.
> >
> > Honestly, this is this first time that I've ever seen anyone try to argue that conferences like this are a bad idea. My experience has been that it has been a very good idea, and there are plenty of people out there who attend conferences regularly and try to get others to go because of how much value they see in it (and not just for dconf). If anything, the number of conferences that I've been hearing about has gone up, not down, and plenty of new conferences have started up in recent years (e.g. BSD Taiwan started up last year, the OpenZFS guys have started up a at least a couple of related conferences in the last few years, and RustConf is quite new). If you think that it's a bad sign that we have dconf, then that's certainly your choice, but the arguments that you've presented are unlikely to be persuasive to those of us who have actually attended dconf.
>
> That's nice, but since you present no arguments other than simply stating that it's "valuable" or "a very good idea" that's "gone up"- why? who knows? That would require actually supplying an argument- the 99.9% of D users who've never attended Dconf are unlikely to be persuaded that it's ever worth attending DConf or wasting any more time with a language that is more focused on blowing time and money on that outdated conference format than getting work done on the language.

As I stated previously, having people meet in person can be a game changer. It gives you a different perspective on people and allows for much more efficient communication in many cases. Some stuff does work best when communicated online, but a lot of stuff works better when you have people in the same place discussing things.

It could certainly be argued that we should do more with less traditional stuff like birds of a feather sessions or other activities that are geared specifically towards folks interacting, but the talks convey lots of useful information and ideas, and there's a lot of discussions that go on about the talks and other topics during the time that talks aren't happening. It would be a real loss to the D community if we lost that.

- Jonathan M Davis

On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 05:36:52 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Saturday, June 30, 2018 02:34:00 Joakim via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 02:23:57 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>> > [...]
>>
>> That's nice, but since you present no arguments other than simply stating that it's "valuable" or "a very good idea" that's "gone up"- why? who knows? That would require actually supplying an argument- the 99.9% of D users who've never attended Dconf are unlikely to be persuaded that it's ever worth attending DConf or wasting any more time with a language that is more focused on blowing time and money on that outdated conference format than getting work done on the language.
>
> As I stated previously, having people meet in person can be a game changer. It gives you a different perspective on people and allows for much more efficient communication in many cases. Some stuff does work best when communicated online, but a lot of stuff works better when you have people in the same place discussing things.
>
> It could certainly be argued that we should do more with less traditional stuff like birds of a feather sessions or other activities that are geared specifically towards folks interacting, but the talks convey lots of useful information and ideas, and there's a lot of discussions that go on about the talks and other topics during the time that talks aren't happening. It would be a real loss to the D community if we lost that.

As I stated previously and Adam reiterates, then do the actual in-person stuff that you find worthwhile and cut out the stuff that's "best when communicated online." I completely disagree that talks are in the former category and not the latter, particularly when a large majority of the scheduled time is spent on them.

On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 18:54:40 UTC, bauss wrote:
> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 17:04:46 UTC, 鲜卑拓跋枫 wrote:
>> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 11:54:48 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 11:32:13 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>>>> On Friday, June 29, 2018 10:50:52 Joakim via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>>>>> I coincidentally just read this blog post, that summarizes a lot of my thoughts against conferences and meetups:
>>>>>
>>>>> https://marco.org/2018/01/17/end-of-conference-era
>>>>>
>>>>> Maybe a good first step would be a mostly online DConf geared towards Asian timezones? I could help out with arranging those online talks.
>>>>
>>>> That article seems to pre-suppose that the only benefit from conferences is the talks. A _lot_ of good comes from having a bunch of the key developers in the same place for a few days where they can talk in person.
>>>
>>> It "pre-supposes" nothing, points like yours are specifically addressed:
>>>
>>> "But all of that media can’t really replace the socializing, networking, and simply fun that happened as part of (or sometimes despite) the conference formula."
>>>
>>>> Some communities (e.g. the BSD community) even have developer meetings connected to conferences where they specifically put a bunch of developers in a room together to discuss stuff. The talks are valuable, but in some ways, those face-to-face interactions are worth far more than the talks. So, while there's certainly value in finding ways to get more talks online, I think that it would be a huge mistake to try and push for online stuff to replace physical conferences where developers actually interact with each other in person.
>>>
>>> I don't, I think it would be a huge improvement. There are very few benefits to getting people together in person in our hyperconnected age, and while "key developers in the same place" may be one of those, that excludes almost everybody else at DConf.
>>>
>>> Honestly, getting everybody together in a room and having them stare straight ahead at a speaker is a blindingly stupid waste of time these days. The only advantage of everybody being together in a room is the heightened communication bandwidth, and then you all sit next to each other staring straight ahead silently. The conference format made sense when pretty much everybody attending didn't have high-speed internet and connected video displays decades ago, but they make no sense now, as that blog post notes.
>>
>> Actually the network speed in China is not satisfied in some extent, and that of Korea and Japan are much better.
>
> What about Hong Kong?

Actually Taiwan is preferred when compare with Hong Kong:).

On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 07:56:28 UTC, 鲜卑拓跋枫 wrote:
> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 18:54:40 UTC, bauss wrote:
>> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 17:04:46 UTC, 鲜卑拓跋枫 wrote:
>>> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 11:54:48 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>>> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 11:32:13 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>>>>> On Friday, June 29, 2018 10:50:52 Joakim via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>>>>>> I coincidentally just read this blog post, that summarizes a lot of my thoughts against conferences and meetups:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> https://marco.org/2018/01/17/end-of-conference-era
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Maybe a good first step would be a mostly online DConf geared towards Asian timezones? I could help out with arranging those online talks.
>>>>>
>>>>> That article seems to pre-suppose that the only benefit from conferences is the talks. A _lot_ of good comes from having a bunch of the key developers in the same place for a few days where they can talk in person.
>>>>
>>>> It "pre-supposes" nothing, points like yours are specifically addressed:
>>>>
>>>> "But all of that media can’t really replace the socializing, networking, and simply fun that happened as part of (or sometimes despite) the conference formula."
>>>>
>>>>> Some communities (e.g. the BSD community) even have developer meetings connected to conferences where they specifically put a bunch of developers in a room together to discuss stuff. The talks are valuable, but in some ways, those face-to-face interactions are worth far more than the talks. So, while there's certainly value in finding ways to get more talks online, I think that it would be a huge mistake to try and push for online stuff to replace physical conferences where developers actually interact with each other in person.
>>>>
>>>> I don't, I think it would be a huge improvement. There are very few benefits to getting people together in person in our hyperconnected age, and while "key developers in the same place" may be one of those, that excludes almost everybody else at DConf.
>>>>
>>>> Honestly, getting everybody together in a room and having them stare straight ahead at a speaker is a blindingly stupid waste of time these days. The only advantage of everybody being together in a room is the heightened communication bandwidth, and then you all sit next to each other staring straight ahead silently. The conference format made sense when pretty much everybody attending didn't have high-speed internet and connected video displays decades ago, but they make no sense now, as that blog post notes.
>>>
>>> Actually the network speed in China is not satisfied in some extent, and that of Korea and Japan are much better.
>>
>> What about Hong Kong?
>
> Actually Taiwan is preferred when compare with Hong Kong:).

Because IT industry is well developed in Taiwan.

On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 17:53:07 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:
> On 06/29/2018 02:20 AM, Joakim wrote:
>> However, Ali notes significant interest in his D book in China and Russia (also see updated stats later in that thread):
>> 
>> https://forum.dlang.org/post/oarr8l$19rh$1@digitalmars.com
>
> Random stats of the day:
>
> Location            Pages   Hits    Bandwidth
> ---------------------------------------------
> United States       34,237  42,608    1.34 GB
> China               28,616  29,040  543.10 MB
> Turkey              16,121  46,814  929.62 MB
> Russian Federation  10,205  12,616  525.24 MB
> Netherlands          8,559   8,747  148.16 MB
> Norway               7,247   7,324   79.20 MB
> Thailand             7,045   7,052   78.29 MB
> Germany              6,172   7,734  495.69 MB
> Brazil               5,272   5,604  128.59 MB
> [...]
>
> Ali


Yes:), I think many Chinese developers show their interests in D language
and related resource like Ali's D book!

On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 14:52:45 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 12:13:09 UTC, 鲜卑拓跋枫 wrote:
>> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 10:50:52 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>> I coincidentally just read this blog post, that summarizes a lot of my thoughts against conferences and meetups:
>>>
>>> https://marco.org/2018/01/17/end-of-conference-era
>>>
>>> Maybe a good first step would be a mostly online DConf geared towards Asian timezones? I could help out with arranging those online talks.
>>
>>
>> It seems that people in different countries of Asia may live in different timezone.
>
> So do people in US and Europe, the vast majority of whom watching the livestream or online videos didn't attend DConf.
>
> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 12:30:49 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
>> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 11:54:48 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>>
>>> I don't, I think it would be a huge improvement. There are very few benefits to getting people together in person in our hyperconnected age, and while "key developers in the same place" may be one of those, that excludes almost everybody else at DConf.
>>
>> Except it doesn't exclude anyone -- it's not just the key developers.
>
> First off, I question there's much benefit to even the key devs beyond communicating through email and video conferencing to iron things out, as Andrei indicates he does with Walter.
>
> And Jonathan only mentioned the key devs, so that does exclude. As for everybody else, see below.
>
>>> Honestly, getting everybody together in a room and having them stare straight ahead at a speaker is a blindingly stupid waste of time these days. The only advantage of everybody being together in a room is the heightened communication bandwidth, and then you all sit next to each other staring straight ahead silently. The conference format made sense when pretty much everybody attending didn't have high-speed internet and connected video displays decades ago, but they make no sense now, as that blog post notes.
>>
>> There are huge benefits to being there in person that extend beyond the time spent listening to the talks. People congregate in the lobby after hours, have three meals a day together, exchange ideas, make new contacts that lead to collaborations down the line... I wouldn't trade the time I've spent at the four DConfs I've attended for anything and very much regret missing the two I couldn't attend.
>
> Then spend all your time doing those things: why waste the majority of conference time sitting through talks that you don't bother defending?
>
> Here's what a "conference" in Asia or Europe or wherever should probably look like in this day and age:
>
> - Have most talks prerecorded by the speaker on their webcam or smartphone, which produce excellent video these days with not much fiddling, and have a couple organizers work with them to get those home-brewed videos up to a certain quality level, both in content and presentation, before posting them online.
>
> - Once the videos are all up, set up weekend meetups in several cities in the region, such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Bangalore, where a few livestreamed talks may talk place if some speakers don't want to spend more time producing a pre-recorded talk, but most time is spent like the hackathon, discussing various existing issues from bugzilla in smaller groups or brainstorming ideas, designs, and libraries for the future.
>
> This is just off the top of my head; I'm sure I'm missing some small details here and there, as I was coming up with parts of this as I wrote it, but I estimate it'd be an order of magnitude more productive than the current conference format while being vastly cheaper in total cost to all involved. Since D is not exactly drowning in money, it makes no sense to waste it on the antiquated conference format. Some American D devs may complain that they no longer essentially get to go on a vacation to Berlin or Munich- a paid vacation if their company compensates for such tech conferences- but that's not our problem.

Thanks for further clarification.
But there is still some limitation may exist, e.g., as you may note that
the latest Linaro Connect that held in Hong Kong add a new special "China Access" for sharing their conference resources like below:
http://connect.linaro.org/hkg18/resources/#1506759202543-a2113613-2111

I noted it because I am very interested in programming on ARM, so I hope LDC
(https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc) could add the support for AARCH64 as soon as possible:).

On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 08:27:30 UTC, 鲜卑拓跋枫 wrote:
> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 14:52:45 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 12:13:09 UTC, 鲜卑拓跋枫 wrote:
>>> [...]
>>
>> So do people in US and Europe, the vast majority of whom watching the livestream or online videos didn't attend DConf.
>>
>> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 12:30:49 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
>>> [...]
>>
>> First off, I question there's much benefit to even the key devs beyond communicating through email and video conferencing to iron things out, as Andrei indicates he does with Walter.
>>
>> And Jonathan only mentioned the key devs, so that does exclude. As for everybody else, see below.
>>
>>> [...]
>>
>> Then spend all your time doing those things: why waste the majority of conference time sitting through talks that you don't bother defending?
>>
>> Here's what a "conference" in Asia or Europe or wherever should probably look like in this day and age:
>>
>> - Have most talks prerecorded by the speaker on their webcam or smartphone, which produce excellent video these days with not much fiddling, and have a couple organizers work with them to get those home-brewed videos up to a certain quality level, both in content and presentation, before posting them online.
>>
>> - Once the videos are all up, set up weekend meetups in several cities in the region, such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Bangalore, where a few livestreamed talks may talk place if some speakers don't want to spend more time producing a pre-recorded talk, but most time is spent like the hackathon, discussing various existing issues from bugzilla in smaller groups or brainstorming ideas, designs, and libraries for the future.
>>
>> This is just off the top of my head; I'm sure I'm missing some small details here and there, as I was coming up with parts of this as I wrote it, but I estimate it'd be an order of magnitude more productive than the current conference format while being vastly cheaper in total cost to all involved. Since D is not exactly drowning in money, it makes no sense to waste it on the antiquated conference format. Some American D devs may complain that they no longer essentially get to go on a vacation to Berlin or Munich- a paid vacation if their company compensates for such tech conferences- but that's not our problem.
>
> Thanks for further clarification.
> But there is still some limitation may exist, e.g., as you may note that
> the latest Linaro Connect that held in Hong Kong add a new special "China Access" for sharing their conference resources like below:
> http://connect.linaro.org/hkg18/resources/#1506759202543-a2113613-2111
>
> I noted it because I am very interested in programming on ARM, so I hope LDC
> (https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc) could add the support for AARCH64 as soon as possible:).

Check out the ltsmaster branch of LDC from git and try it out, most tests passed for me on Ubuntu/AArch64 16.04:

https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc/issues/2153#issuecomment-384264048

The few remaining exceptions are some math-related modules would need to be patched to support 128-bit floating-point real numbers, such as CustomFloat from std.numeric, std.internal.math.gammafunction, or the floating-point parser from std.conv (but only if you really need that extra precision, most of that code still works at 80-bit accuracy), though all the tests from std.math now pass. The other big issue is core.stdc.stdarg needs to be adapted for AArch64 varargs, which is what's holding back building the latest LDC 1.10 natively.