John Reimer wrote:
> I don't disagree with what you say here.  It's just that I found your one-liner in the previous post rather cheap ("no one put a gun to yer head"), and perhaps lacking background on D community drama.  Your post above elucidates your thoughts more fully, so I can appreciate that contribution better.

"Nobody put a gun to yer head" is a memorable quote from George Costanza. He was playing a bad boy in an attempt to seduce Elaine's coworker :o).

Thanks for the info. I guess it's hard to change the current state of affairs. Language design is quite a different kind of project, in which the undilluted vision of one person (or a very small core of people) is essential.


Andrei

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> "Stewart Gordon" <smjg_1998@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:emgj1d$16pp$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> 
>> So that I know for next time, how do you reckon my points could be put into a "less inflammatory fashion"?
> 
> Tact is something that you usually just have to pick up.
> 
> One thing I've noticed you do is using "us" and "we" to mean "me" and "I". "It's time to make a list of Walter's habits that continually annoy _us_." "Why won't you tell _us_ why?"  It's a way of trying to make it sound like you're not alone, like more people support you than it seems.  The thing is, most of the time you _are_ posting alone, and it just comes across as presumptuous.  Just because these things annoy _you_, they don't necessarily annoy everyone else.  What, do you expect everyone else to just jump on the Walter-bashing bandwagon?

True, they are things that annoy me, but to imply that I was the only one seemed silly.  Besides, it wouldn't make much sense to invite contributions from others to a list of things that annoy _me_.

<snip>
> Okay, let's keep going.  You latch onto minor issues that very few other people really care about and don't let them go.  opEquals returning bool vs. int?  How long has _that_ one been going?

Latching onto "minor" issues - is there anything wrong with that?
Not letting them go - my last comment on it was half a month ago, and to add good reasons for it to the subject seemed reasonable.

> You're a complete ass to newcomers who don't understand the way we do things around here.  Case in point:
> 
> http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=45445
> 
> (And there's that 'us' again: "Don't just tell us that something gives an error, tell _us_ _what the error is_!")

So you think the person who I was responding to should've told me and nobody else?

> That's all I can think of for now.
> 
>> Not true.  I for one, Bruno for another, have been pushing all this time for 1.0 to wait until it's ready.
> 
> And at the same time you've posted all kinds of "when is it time to freeze features for 1.0?" messages. 

Yes.  Freezing the features so that we can concentrate on getting the features we have properly specified and implemented.

> Walter has finally decided when he's frozen features for 1.0 -- now! -- and yet you criticize him for it.  Make up your mind. 

Please show me your evidence that I've seen any such statement from Walter.

Stewart.

We We We We We We --wtf!

Get a bit less ego-centric, maybe you'll find supporters then.

> Nonetheless, there are people here that have made copious contributions to D.  Yes, Walter does own large entitlement to the work that has gone into the reference compiler and libraries, but that's mostly because he controls it and there's very little that people can do to make large contributions internally: they very likely would if they could.  Most contributions, therefore, are relegated to periphery tasks or identifying bugs (fixing them is not often accepted).  This has been the way Walter has preferred to run things, and for the most part people have accepted this.  Although every once in awhile flair-ups occur because members get frustrated when contributions are refused, rejected, forgotten, or ignored despite the same bugs being brought up repeatedly.  The reason for this is more often because Walter is already overloaded with work, and he cannot manage to review and implement all contribution.  This is not to say this Walter is absolutely horridly wrong in the way he runs things... it's more about posing the question on how efficiency might be improved concerning internal workload distribution and organization.  But repeatedly such suggestions have been rejected as infeasable (or simply ignored).


That's very informative and interesting.


From a user point of view (i.e. somebody that does not contribute to D development but is contemplating using the language), Walter's so called "annoying habits" produced a pretty good product.  Therefore, I would call them good habits.  We (ooops, here's the "we" but it is intended to mean "non specific future users of D")  are getting a language that addresses many problems and shortcomings encountered in existing tools, most prominently C/C++.  D is attractive in certain applications.

Alas, the innerworkings of the team that produces D are of major interest to the users. Basically, what's need is a product that may be called mainstream.  D has advanced to the point where it is quite usable and the language design and implementation issues are no longer the top concern.  The top concern is how mainstream it is.  Of course, D is not mainstream yet.  That's OK.  The question is what is the roadmap to becoming one.  In other words, how do the developers intend to bring the language to the level where it is accepted on par with C++/Python/PHP, etc, etc.

Continuing on Walter's good habits, I can see the improvement every year, and the
upcoming 1.0 is great news.  So far so good.  There is progress elsewhere as well.
    Good, good.

Andrei Alexandrescu (See Website For Email) wrote:
> Manfred Nowak wrote:
>>> I intended this to be a serious, potentially constructive
>>> criticism of Walter's way of operating.
>>
>> It is a known phenomenon in organizations, especially charity
>> organizations, that all attributions to persons considered to be
>> leading characters of the organization will immediately bring up
>> all toadies of that organization against the attributor.
> 
> Ionno. I might have a wrong or simplistic image of the situation, but to me things are simple: Walter is creating a product. He is motivated mainly by community building and approval. The community uses his product and provides useful feedback and suggestions for improvements. In doing so, they invest time and talent in the product to various degrees.
> 
> The question is, how much improvement comes from a specific member of the community, and what amount of entitlement should derive from that? I don't know much about the historical contributions that people have made to D, but my perception (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that Walter holds an overwhelmingly high percent of the shares. In that case, it's hard to make the case that a community member can behave as if Walter owes him something.
> 
> 
> Andrei

I think it is important to clearly note the following:

One thing is to require, ask, or simply *want* for Walter (or in the general case, any person in power of any project) to do X.

Another thing is to claim that *it is best for D* (be it the language, community, or whatever) that X be done.

Usually both positions come together, but it must be noted that whereas for the first one, the contributions/money/favors/etc. of the proponent person do matter, for the second case, they do not matter at all. That is, one might have not contributed to D *anything*, not even the simplest contribution forms like commenting, testing, bug reporting,etc., but still one can make a valid claim of what he/she thinks would be better to be done or not.
Of course that claim could be wrong (or simply be subjective opinion), and then there is a valid line of discussion of whether the claim is wrong/not-wrong/subjective, but what is not a valid discussion or commenting is stuff like "Walter's work is free, so you don't have any right to say what should be done". That is something I've seen before on D, and also often on other open source projects, where it is a prevalent position. And it is a fallacy . Indeed I do not have the right to *demand* that something be done in project Foo for which I have contributed nothing, but I can still very well posit on what would be better to be done or not.

Bottom-line: Steward Gordon may not have formulated his opinion in an appropriate way, but it surely is not the "Walter's work is free, so you don't have any right to..." that renders Steward's opinion (or any kind  of Walter criticizing) invalid.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - MSc in CS/E student
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D

Stewart Gordon wrote:
> It's time to make a list of Walter's habits that continually annoy us. Here are some of my peeves, to start it off:
> 
> 

The fact that some of Walter's habits are annoying is of no relevance. If you want to criticize Walter (and despite Walter's great job I *do think* there is room for criticizing), it should be done under the perspective of what is best for D. The fact that it annoys (and how much it annoys) is just an offtopic side-effect.

And for the record, I disagree with most of the faulty habits points you bring forward below. I'm not interested enough to discuss why.

> 1. Dodging issues, including important ones such as
> 
> http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D.bugs&article_id=9360 
> 
> http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=41553 
> 
> 
> (Why is webnews showing only two messages from this in the thread view, even when viewing the message?)
> 
> 2. Denying responsibility for his
> own slip-ups.  For example, marking what's left of
> 
> http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=327
> 
> INVALID despite this being due to an obvious mistake he made while updating the spec, as well as violating the design of D.  No doubt there are other instances, but I can't seem to think of them at the moment.
> 
> 
> 3. Otherwise hitting the INVALID 'button' without properly analysing things, meaning that it becomes necessary to reopen.
> 
> 
> 4. Implementing his own ideas but keeping even constructive criticism - let alone implementation - of other people's ideas to a minimum.
> 
> 
> 5. Implementing new features when he should be concentrating on getting things working properly.
> 
> 
> 6. Postponing indefinitely, for no apparent reason, folding in fixes people have gone to all the trouble to write.
> 
> 
> 7. Not using a spellchecker.
> 
> 
> 8. Apparently never learning from the spelling corrections we keep giving him.
> 
> (Please forgive me if you _have_ since heeded the advice in
> http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=631
> )
> 
> 
> More contributions to this list would be more than welcome!
> 
> Stewart.


-- 
Bruno Medeiros - MSc in CS/E student
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D

On Sat, 23 Dec 2006 02:25:04 -0800, Andrei Alexandrescu (See Website For Email) <SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org> wrote:

> John Reimer wrote:
>> I don't disagree with what you say here.  It's just that I found your one-liner in the previous post rather cheap ("no one put a gun to yer head"), and perhaps lacking background on D community drama.  Your post above elucidates your thoughts more fully, so I can appreciate that contribution better.
>
> "Nobody put a gun to yer head" is a memorable quote from George Costanza. He was playing a bad boy in an attempt to seduce Elaine's coworker :o).


I assumed it was something of the sort. :)


> Thanks for the info. I guess it's hard to change the current state of affairs. Language design is quite a different kind of project, in which the undilluted vision of one person (or a very small core of people) is essential.
>


Yes, that's the kind of statement that will hold the masses forever hostage
...until we become language designers ourselves. ;D

-JJR

On Sat, 23 Dec 2006 10:30:57 -0800, Bruno Medeiros <brunodomedeiros+spam@com.gmail> wrote:

>
> The fact that some of Walter's habits are annoying is of no relevance. If you want to criticize Walter (and despite Walter's great job I *do think* there is room for criticizing), it should be done under the perspective of what is best for D. The fact that it annoys (and how much it annoys) is just an offtopic side-effect.
>

Good point, Bruno.  The focus was entirely incorrect.  Personal feelings really have no place in a critique.  People can be annoyed at almost anything that goes on. :)

-JJR

Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> Stewart Gordon wrote:
> 
>> It's time to make a list of Walter's habits that continually annoy us. Here are some of my peeves, to start it off:
> 
> The fact that some of Walter's habits are annoying is of no relevance. If you want to criticize Walter (and despite Walter's great job I *do think* there is room for criticizing), it should be done under the perspective of what is best for D. The fact that it annoys (and how much it annoys) is just an offtopic side-effect.

At least half of my points can indeed be considered as showing how we have far from the best for D.

> And for the record, I disagree with most of the faulty habits points you bring forward below.

Do you mean you disagree that:
- they are faulty?
- they are habits?
- they are happening?
- something else?

> I'm not interested enough to discuss why.
<snip>

What was the point of quoting them then?

Stewart.

Waldemar wrote:
>> Nonetheless, there are people here that have made copious contributions to D.  Yes, Walter does own large entitlement to the work that has gone into the reference compiler and libraries, but that's mostly because he controls it and there's very little that people can do to make large contributions internally: they very likely would if they could.  Most contributions, therefore, are relegated to periphery tasks or identifying bugs (fixing them is not often accepted).  This has been the way Walter has preferred to run things, and for the most part people have accepted this.  Although every once in awhile flair-ups occur because members get frustrated when contributions are refused, rejected, forgotten, or ignored despite the same bugs being brought up repeatedly.  The reason for this is more often because Walter is already overloaded with work, and he cannot manage to review and implement all contribution.

This may be true.  However, the odd reminders of such things as fixes waiting to be folded in should at least work, when folding them in is sufficiently quick and straightforward that "just do it now and get it out of the way" is an efficient strategy.

<snip>
> From a user point of view (i.e. somebody that does not contribute to D development but is contemplating using the language), Walter's so called "annoying habits" produced a pretty good product.  Therefore, I would call them good habits.  We (ooops, here's the "we" but it is intended to mean "non specific future users of D")  are getting a language that addresses many problems and shortcomings encountered in existing tools, most prominently C/C++.  D is attractive in certain  applications.

An interesting concept.  Walter may easily have produced a pretty good product _despite_ these habits, and while some of them may have helped Walter to concentrate on improving the quality of the product, I still believe it would be better still if Walter did more to appreciate and make use of the work of this community.

> Alas, the innerworkings of the team that produces D are of major interest to the users. Basically, what's need is a product that may be called mainstream.  D has advanced to the point where it is quite usable and the language design and implementation issues are no longer the top concern.  The top concern is how mainstream it is.  Of course, D is not mainstream yet.  That's OK.  The question is what is the roadmap to becoming one.  In other words, how do the developers intend to bring the language to the level where it is accepted on par with C++/Python/PHP, etc, etc.

Yes, I agree that getting D into the mainstream in this sense would be a good idea.  When hopes of releasing 1.0 were a long way off, spreading the word around about it seemed a good idea.  I suppose it's partly my thinking that while the language was still expected to remain in a beta stage for the foreseeable future, its faults would have been forgivable by many.  I for one was optimistic back then that most of the faults would be dealt with before 1.0, and I suspect many people who come and find D would expect the same.

> Continuing on Walter's good habits, I can see the improvement every year, and the upcoming 1.0 is great news.  So far so good.  There is progress elsewhere as well. Good, good.

This little bit of optimism has got me thinking.  All too many times in my life, my glass has gone from half full to half empty.  But here, I think the problem is that the glass is getting bigger as more is being poured into it.

But I continue to have high hopes for D, and that the glass really is filling up now.

Stewart.