February 02, 2018 Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++? | ||||
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| On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 08:17 -0800, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote: > On Thu, Feb 01, 2018 at 03:47:50PM +0000, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d wrote: > > […] > > For me: > > > > aptitude install ldc > > aptitude install gdc > > aptitude install dmd-bin > > aptitude install dub > > > > Seems to work fine, and no conflicts. > > [...] > > Only because the OS has a sane packaging system (and some people were kind enough to package the compilers in nice packages). For less-privileged OSes, the user experience could be drastically different. ;-) I see two obvious inferences: a) use a platform with a good packaging system, and good packaging team. b) if you cannot use a such a system, raise the problem and then get involved in fixing it. -- Russel. =========================================== Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk |
February 02, 2018 Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++? | ||||
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Posted in reply to Benny Attachments:
| On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 17:25 +0000, Benny via Digitalmars-d wrote: > On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 15:47:50 UTC, Russel Winder wrote: > > For me: > > > > aptitude install ldc > > aptitude install gdc > > aptitude install dmd-bin > > aptitude install dub > > > > Seems to work fine, and no conflicts. > > > > […] > > Please try Windows and then come back ;) Uuurrr… no. Those people who choose to use a system such as Windows, for which no-one is providing packaging, have a responsibility to: a) raise the problems; and b) help fix raised problems. -- Russel. =========================================== Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk |
February 02, 2018 Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++? | ||||
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Posted in reply to John Gabriele Attachments:
| On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 19:41 +0000, John Gabriele via Digitalmars-d wrote: > […] > It's trivial to put multiple markdown files together into a large doc, if that's desired. Just put a bunch of .md files together into the same directory and run your markdown processor on them. They can link to each other in the [normal way](./other-file.html#normal-way). Auto generation of contents pages, and indexes? Tables? Nested lists? The CommonMark crib sheet says nothing. AsciiDoctor has all of them, though I prefer XeLaTeX. > Markdown provides a simple, practical, modern, and commonly-known way to get docs written fast and by anyone who wants to pop in and improve them. There's no easier way to write plain text docs that look as good. AsciiDoctor. > Sorry, can't recall if I already mentioned this, but D suffers from a perception that it's "old", or "the language that tried and failed to replace C++". Something simple like markdown for its docs sends a clear message that D is modern and knows when to pivot to new and better ways after the old ways are not serving it anymore. Markdown is so last decade. Ditto AsciiDoctor. XeLateX so last millenium. The question is choosing the right tool for the job, not pandering to hipster fashionistas. Clearly one reviews new ways and moves to them if that provides a better way forward, but the goal is more important that the technology. There are the autogenerated reference pages. JavaDoc, Doxygen, all have their upside and downside. D has DDOC, is it fit for purpose? Should it be replaced (by Doxygen) or evolved? Maybe Markdown fits here, but without table support you end up hacking stuff. cf. vast tracts of early JavaDoc stuff. For the documents no created by scanning the source code, you want something like Markdown, AsciiDoc, ReStructuredText, XeLaTeX. I think Sphinx/ReStructuredText actually can do both from code generated reference and other documents – it does for many projects as well as Python. I happen to rate AsciiDoc far better than Markdown as a lightweight text markup, though actually I prefer XeLaTeX. However, simply trading emails about "I think X is best" is not going to get anyone anywhere. Only when someone actually does something is there movement forward. So unless some actually creates a demo of the (Markdown|AsciiDoctor|XeLaTeX) system nothing will change. Of course if Walter and/or Andrei don't like it, it will be wasted effort. > Incidentally, choosing an established standard like markdown is a good way to short-circuit bikeshedding about "it what ways should ddoc be updated to include some markdown features?". Just pick standard CommonMark markdown and you're done. s/Markdown/AsciiDoctor/g > One last note and I'll (try to!) stop: it's difficult enough to get good writers to help with docs. Much more so when they've got to first learn your own language-specific markup (which is only useful with your project). This is a good and strong point, that has been raised in many other places I frequent. One group changed from their custom DocBook/XML to Sphinx because someone did stuff rather than talking about it. AsciiDoctor would clearly have been a better solution, evolution using the DocBook toolchain, but they went for the revolution because people put effort into it to make the decision happen. The core point is how are you going to get pull requests from people to update and evolve the documentation. An esoteric, indeed unique, markup language is clearly the wrong choice. -- Russel. =========================================== Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk |
February 02, 2018 Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++? | ||||
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Posted in reply to John Gabriele Attachments:
| On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 19:28 +0000, John Gabriele via Digitalmars-d wrote: > On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 03:00:07 UTC, Walter Bright wrote: > > On 1/31/2018 5:58 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote: > > > cosmetic features. > > > > I tough lesson I've learned is that cosmetics matter, a lot. Sometimes much more than substance. There's no getting away from it. I agree but only if s/Markdown/AsciiDoctor/g > This is one reason I recommend markdown for docs. Cosmetics is what markdown does best. People *like* looking at it and editing it. It's like typing an email or a forum comment. > > Other reasons I recommend it are: > > * everyone already knows it (it's at github, stackoverflow, and > reddit), > > * it's fairly easy to write (as easy as possible while still > looking good), > > * there's an open spec (CommonMark), and > > * writing new language-specific markup formats appears to be > something that's not done anymore. There's javadoc, texinfo, > doxygen, docbook, groff --- all very ... *mature* technologies. > In modern projects: Rust uses markdown, Python uses reST, Git > uses asciidoc --- all general-purpose non- language-specific > lightweight markup formats. > > The only reason I can think of for *not* using markdown for project docs is if your project is another competing lightweight markup format. Markdown was created to write a few HTML pages. AsciiDoc (and thus AsciiDoctor) was invented to be a front end to the DocBook/XML toolchain. Thus Markdown is for a few small very simple webpages, AsciiDoctor is for creating any form of document from a page to a book. They are similar where Markdown has functionality, but AsciiDoctor has so much more, and most people end up finding they want all the extras. XeLaTeX and Sphinx/ReStructuredText are the competition for AsciiDoctor. Markdown is lacking in functionality people will find they need to use. -- Russel. =========================================== Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk |
February 02, 2018 Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++? | ||||
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Posted in reply to H. S. Teoh | On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 23:38:22 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote: > And IIRC, Andrei had already bought into the ddox system by then (the process of merging it might have already begun, I'm not 100% certain), so dpldocs was already starting from a disadvantaged position, whatever merits it may have on its own. > And I'll be frank that sometimes Andrei can take some effort to convince, and it takes a certain amount of dogged persistence (and thick-skin) to get through to him sometimes. And it doesn't help that he has so much on his plate, and generally doesn't have enough time to dedicate to all the decisions waiting upon him to make, so sometimes it can be frustrating trying to get through to him. > > T In DConf 2016 Andrei literally said "I'm in charge of too many things. Please get me fired!" [1]. Sadly, it doesn't seem like much firing has happened since then. :-( [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oDK91E3VKs&feature=youtu.be&t=9m42s |
February 02, 2018 Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++? | ||||
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Posted in reply to Mark | On Fri, Feb 02, 2018 at 03:06:57PM +0000, Mark via Digitalmars-d wrote: > On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 23:38:22 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote: [...] > > And I'll be frank that sometimes Andrei can take some effort to convince, and it takes a certain amount of dogged persistence (and thick-skin) to get through to him sometimes. And it doesn't help that he has so much on his plate, and generally doesn't have enough time to dedicate to all the decisions waiting upon him to make, so sometimes it can be frustrating trying to get through to him. [...] It seems that what I said above caused a bit of a stir. So let me clarify that it was not intended to be a personal critique of Andrei, and I apologize if it came across that way. It was more intended as a friendly dig on, shall we say, one of his more endearing personality traits -- strong opinions on technical issues and the guts to stick to them. And to his credit, I don't know if somebody else in his shoes would be able to do better than he does now. Having to make sometimes tough decisions, e.g., rejecting work that somebody put a lot of effort into for the sake of the larger picture, while under the pressure of so many other responsibilities, is not something I envy. We should be glad Andrei is willing to shoulder this burden, since otherwise D would not be where it is today. > In DConf 2016 Andrei literally said "I'm in charge of too many things. Please get me fired!" [1]. Sadly, it doesn't seem like much firing has happened since then. :-( [...] It has, to some extent. But the fundamental problem remains that more manpower is needed so that he can be freed up to do the more important things. Having to personally review all new public symbols added to Phobos, for example, just doesn't seem scalable in the long run. But, as Andrei himself said, the last time he left that decision to somebody else, there was a noticeable deterioration in the quality of code in Phobos. So we need not only more manpower, but also more *trusted* manpower; people who share the same views as Andrei, whom he can trust to make the right decisions without his intervention. T -- "Maybe" is a strange word. When mom or dad says it it means "yes", but when my big brothers say it it means "no"! -- PJ jr. |
February 02, 2018 Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++? | ||||
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| On Fri, 2018-02-02 at 10:17 -0800, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote: > […] > It has, to some extent. But the fundamental problem remains that more > manpower is needed so that he can be freed up to do the more > important > things. Having to personally review all new public symbols added to > Phobos, for example, just doesn't seem scalable in the long > run. But, > as Andrei himself said, the last time he left that decision to > somebody > else, there was a noticeable deterioration in the quality of code in > Phobos. So we need not only more manpower, but also more *trusted* > manpower; people who share the same views as Andrei, whom he can > trust > to make the right decisions without his intervention. Hummm… could it be that Andrei did not define the task appropriately, train the person appropriately, and mentor the person appropriately. Management has to be able to delegate and achieve required results without doing the work themselves. -- Russel. =========================================== Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk |
February 02, 2018 Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++? | ||||
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Posted in reply to rjframe | On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 11:40:32 UTC, rjframe wrote: > On Thu, 01 Feb 2018 11:11:20 +0000, Martin Tschierschke wrote: > > >> Idea: There should be some kind of news ticker for all enhancements and important decisions, maybe at first just via twitter with a special #tag beside #dlang where all updates are announced. And a place on the homepage, where this feed is displayed separately. > > The announce forum gets most things; if you're not reading it you'll want to (between that and the changelog for the compiler and library, that's most activity). A twitter bot to pull all announce posts from core committers might not be a bad idea. Not could - it's now is: https://forum.dlang.org/post/tzyleprmwjmdnjhhpnub@forum.dlang.org |
February 02, 2018 Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++? | ||||
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Posted in reply to H. S. Teoh | On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 18:17:30 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 02, 2018 at 03:06:57PM +0000, Mark via
>
> It has, to some extent. But the fundamental problem remains that more manpower is needed so that he can be freed up to do the more important things. Having to personally review all new public symbols added to Phobos, for example, just doesn't seem scalable in the long run. But, as Andrei himself said, the last time he left that decision to somebody else, there was a noticeable deterioration in the quality of code in Phobos. So we need not only more manpower, but also more *trusted* manpower; people who share the same views as Andrei, whom he can trust to make the right decisions without his intervention.
There's no silver bullet to this, and it's indeed a very difficult task.
Having done this for a lot of my life, my advice is simply to keep that always present in every decision, and, sometime, be more permissive in the short term decisions, to just archive that more important long term goal.
Growing (and discovering!), talents it's indeed a job by itself.
/P
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February 02, 2018 Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++? | ||||
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Posted in reply to Russel Winder | On 2/2/2018 11:08 AM, Russel Winder wrote:
> Hummm… could it be that Andrei did not define the task appropriately,
> train the person appropriately, and mentor the person appropriately.
> Management has to be able to delegate and achieve required results
> without doing the work themselves.
Of course. But all that is far easier said than done.
Andrei and I are not born managers, we are learning as we go. So I ask for your indulgence and understanding where we fall short.
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