On 11/04/17 21:04, bachmeier wrote:
> On Tuesday, 11 April 2017 at 13:20:58 UTC, HaraldZealot wrote:
>>
>> I hope that D community find its good way to interoperate and hence
>> survive.
>
> Just to clarify, I'm not sure that the current process is broken. As Ken
> Thompson has said of C++: "It certainly has its good points. But by and
> large I think it’s a bad language. It does a lot of things half well and
> it’s just a garbage heap of ideas that are mutually exclusive." The
> current process does protect D from going down that road, AFAICT.
>

You do realize that the thread we're discussing is about how to reconcile exceptions and nogc, right? It seems that they are, at least so far, mutually exclusive.

Shachar

On Wednesday, 12 April 2017 at 07:51:28 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> On Tuesday, 11 April 2017 at 19:18:32 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 10:24:01AM -0700, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>>> On 4/11/2017 2:18 AM, qznc wrote:
>>> > It usually comes down to charismatic and visionary leaders. Walter and Andrei are good with that, otherwise D would have faltered long ago.
>>> 
>>> For a socially inept nerd such as myself, with all the charisma of a lamppost, I think D has done very well.
>>
>> You underestimate yourself. While you're no charismatic hero by any stretch of imagination, you do carry quite some weight in what you say simply by your history of achievements, as well as your technical expertise and wealth of experience in computer-related issues. It's no surprise that in this crowd full of like-minded nerds who respect technical expertise, you're doing none too badly.  It might be a completely different story if you were in a more "typical" social setting, though. :-P
>
> I was going to say something similar.  I have seen responses in reddit/HN threads where devs were in awe that Walter Bright responded to them.  In the tech community, which has _completely_ different ideas of what constitutes charisma and vision, Walter and Andrei, with his distinguished history and very entertaining talks, are pretty much the definition.  That is not the issue, D has those in spades.

+1

I'm not sure if Walter can claim to have written a complete C++ compiler all by himself. Even if not, he is probably the one person on this planet, who is closest.

Walter is also pretty good with nerd-sniping [0]. ;)

[0] Example: https://forum.dlang.org/post/mg13tc$2ptk$1@digitalmars.com

On 4/12/2017 6:37 AM, qznc wrote:
> I'm not sure if Walter can claim to have written a complete C++ compiler all by
> himself.

I can and I did - if you consider a complete compiler as source code to object file.

I've even written part of a linker (BLINK, the Zortech linker, the bulk of which was written by Bjorn Freeman-Benson).

On Tuesday, 11 April 2017 at 19:18:32 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 10:24:01AM -0700, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> For a socially inept nerd such as myself, with all the charisma of a lamppost, I think D has done very well.
>
> You underestimate yourself. While you're no charismatic hero by any stretch of imagination, you do carry quite some weight in what you say simply by your history of achievements, as well as your technical expertise and wealth of experience in computer-related issues.

+1

You're way under-estimating your street-cred :)

And the most impressive to me is actually the way Walter answers to D users. If you are reading this forum since years you know what I mean. I try to emulate some of this with customers.

On Thursday, 13 April 2017 at 11:31:12 UTC, Guillaume Piolat wrote:

> And the most impressive to me is actually the way Walter answers to D users. If you are reading this forum since years you know what I mean. I try to emulate some of this with customers.

That's really true: I sincerely think that he has a real talent in that.
Just keep going on that way, Walter: humble and pragmatic!

(BTW, if someone has access to this: https://hbr.org/2017/04/if-humble-people-make-the-best-leaders-why-do-we-fall-for-charismatic-narcissists)

:-P

---
Paolo

On Monday, 10 April 2017 at 22:07:11 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> There are many. A random sampling:

The vast, vast majority of the stuff I do in D though are for myself. I used to want to get more into Phobos, but I just don't care anymore - I prefer staying as an independent library other than trying to include my batteries in std now.

On Tuesday, 11 April 2017 at 19:18:32 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> While you're no charismatic hero by any stretch of imagination, you do carry quite some weight in what you say simply by your history of achievements, as well as your technical expertise and wealth of experience in computer-related issues. It's no surprise that in this crowd full of like-minded nerds who respect technical expertise, you're doing none too badly.  It might be a completely different story if you were in a more "typical" social setting, though. :-P

Yeah, Intel's "Our rock stars are not like your rock stars" ad [1] illustrates the idea really well.

[1]: https://youtu.be/zMlWbTqwkdU (30 seconds)

--
Alexander

On Monday, 10 April 2017 at 22:07:11 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> There are many. A random sampling:
>
> Daniel Murphy - moving front end to D
> Jacob Carlborg - Objective C support
> Stephan Koch - newCTFE
> Brad Roberts - autotester, bugzilla
> the gdc and ldc teams
> Rainer Schutze - GC work, Visual Studio support
> Martin Nowak - the releases
> Ali Cehreli - book on D
> Adam Ruppe - book on D
> Jan Knepper - the dlang site server

One thing that's noticeable about all of these is that they are all changes to the language implementation (e.g. D frontend, newCTFE, GC), documentation (the books, the website), tools (the other compilers), and distribution; but none of them are significant changes to the language _definition_.

The only one that comes close is the Objective C support and that's a supplemental feature (albeit a very useful and important one) that's about how D interacts with other languages, rather than how D itself works.

Even allowing for the fact that changes to the language definition should face a high bar (made higher by the general wish for non-breaking changes), that suggests that the 'champion'-based approach may run into difficulties when it comes to more fundamental contributions to the D language.

On Thursday, 6 April 2017 at 19:27:50 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> We commit to be more formal about the process, but overall it is correct that we have more say in what gets in the language. Allow me to add a couple of things.
>
> First, this is the way things are commonly done in language design - a small committee defines a formal process and ultimately decides on features. In fact it is unusual that we put up unfinished ideas up for discussion, which we hope has the raises the level of responsibility in the community. I understand how what we did has been misunderstood as us just considering ourselves exempt from the due process.

I'm glad to hear your intentions regarding process, but on this note I think there's a point that's worth considering.

One of the challenges we have is that a number of talented people have in the last years become disillusioned with the ability to get results through the processes on the table, or to have their feedback taken into account.  That means that there's not just a question of process moving forward; there's a question of how to undo the credibility gap that's been created by these past events.

So, while I think it's good that you lead by example in putting complete ideas up for discussion, it's also necessary to lead by example in actively seeking and taking on board feedback on these ideas, wherever it comes from (whether through a formal DIP review, or in discussion on the message boards, or whatever).  This matters because if people can see that their smaller-scale feedback is being clearly taken into account, it gives greater encouragement to actually put in the work on larger-scale, more complete ideas of their own.

To take an example, Deadalnix' feedback on the @nogc Exceptions thread may not have been actionable, but there was detailed information there that could have been the subject of future investigation.  It comes across as putting process before community to insist that this feedback be provided via a DIP or in the formal review of a DIP <https://forum.dlang.org/post/oc2n3d$ijg$1@digitalmars.com> before it will be taken on board.  You have the information; why wouldn't you engage with it, if nothing else just to show willingness to break with the way things turned out in the past?

Put it this way: if the complaint is that you and Walter bypass process when you feel like it to get your own ideas through, a good way back from that might be to switch the equation round -- to _strictly_ apply process to your own ideas and contributions, but to actively engage with community feedback and ideas even when it doesn't go through the expected channels.

Then, if you get some level of progress and increased engagement with that, you might slowly make the process for everyone stricter over time -- once confidence in the process has been re-established.

That general principle -- of applying a higher bar to oneself than to anyone else -- is one that can serve well in increasing confidence in leadership.

Points well taken, thanks. One clarification - there is no need to formalize feedback to a DIP as another DIP, unless of course it is an alternative approach of its own.

A better process will indeed help all of us and raise the level of responsibility across the board. Acting on feedback entails good feedback is being passed around, thus creating a virtuous circle. So far the best example of that we have around is DIP1005, wherein successive rounds of meaningful feedback led to rigorous experiments and reviews, which in turn revealed new and surprising insights.


Thanks,

Andrei

On 04/14/2017 11:12 AM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> On Thursday, 6 April 2017 at 19:27:50 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> We commit to be more formal about the process, but overall it is
>> correct that we have more say in what gets in the language. Allow me
>> to add a couple of things.
>>
>> First, this is the way things are commonly done in language design - a
>> small committee defines a formal process and ultimately decides on
>> features. In fact it is unusual that we put up unfinished ideas up for
>> discussion, which we hope has the raises the level of responsibility
>> in the community. I understand how what we did has been misunderstood
>> as us just considering ourselves exempt from the due process.
>
> I'm glad to hear your intentions regarding process, but on this note I
> think there's a point that's worth considering.
>
> One of the challenges we have is that a number of talented people have
> in the last years become disillusioned with the ability to get results
> through the processes on the table, or to have their feedback taken into
> account.  That means that there's not just a question of process moving
> forward; there's a question of how to undo the credibility gap that's
> been created by these past events.
>
> So, while I think it's good that you lead by example in putting complete
> ideas up for discussion, it's also necessary to lead by example in
> actively seeking and taking on board feedback on these ideas, wherever
> it comes from (whether through a formal DIP review, or in discussion on
> the message boards, or whatever).  This matters because if people can
> see that their smaller-scale feedback is being clearly taken into
> account, it gives greater encouragement to actually put in the work on
> larger-scale, more complete ideas of their own.
>
> To take an example, Deadalnix' feedback on the @nogc Exceptions thread
> may not have been actionable, but there was detailed information there
> that could have been the subject of future investigation.  It comes
> across as putting process before community to insist that this feedback
> be provided via a DIP or in the formal review of a DIP
> <https://forum.dlang.org/post/oc2n3d$ijg$1@digitalmars.com> before it
> will be taken on board.  You have the information; why wouldn't you
> engage with it, if nothing else just to show willingness to break with
> the way things turned out in the past?
>
> Put it this way: if the complaint is that you and Walter bypass process
> when you feel like it to get your own ideas through, a good way back
> from that might be to switch the equation round -- to _strictly_ apply
> process to your own ideas and contributions, but to actively engage with
> community feedback and ideas even when it doesn't go through the
> expected channels.
>
> Then, if you get some level of progress and increased engagement with
> that, you might slowly make the process for everyone stricter over time
> -- once confidence in the process has been re-established.
>
> That general principle -- of applying a higher bar to oneself than to
> anyone else -- is one that can serve well in increasing confidence in
> leadership.