August 08, 2017
On Tuesday, 8 August 2017 at 15:40:08 UTC, Ryion wrote:

> I applaud the people who contribute but reading posts here that pushing people ( on a lot of topics ) to contribute does not exactly motivate. It shows a rather desperation that we do not see in other languages forums.
>porting /
> expanding the plugins.
>
> It feels like this approach is just wrong... When people are motivated, they so so from themselves and do not need the "gentle" pushing on a forum to do so.

It's not pushing, not desperation. It's just a fact of life in community-driven projects. And this is certainly not the only community I've seen it in. The fact is, the things that get implemented, whether they be IDE plugins, libraries, tooling, whatever, actually do get implemented because someone stepped up to do it. Sometimes things get abandoned and others step in to take them over, other times they rot. So it's perfectly reasonable advice to give someone -- if you see a hole that needs filling, you can either try to get someone else to fill it or do it yourself. There is simply no team you can go to with a feature request that can be put on a task list and assigned to someone later on down the road. Without a champion to move it forward, it's just going to fall into the bin of great ideas that never see the light of day.
August 08, 2017
On Tuesday, 8 August 2017 at 15:40:08 UTC, Ryion wrote:
> On Sunday, 6 August 2017 at 19:15:59 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
>> Your claim to have limited D skills doesn't prevent you from writing a blog post detailing the things that are missing for Windows development and showing how other languages deal with them. A lot of work with tooling doesn't require D skills for that matter (for instance, Eclipse plugins are not written in D AFAIK). You can ask the current tool developers how to help, report bugs, make suggestions, fix small bugs,.... The least effective thing to do is to post on the forum that the tools aren't good enough.
>
> I applaud the people who contribute but reading posts here that pushing people ( on a lot of topics ) to contribute does not exactly motivate.

No one is "pushing" anyone. It's a simple declaration of facts: What is wanted here is currently not wanted by enough other people in the community strongly enough for them to spend more time on it than they currently do (or they would do so). It follows, that if someone want to get such things done, that someone can either wait until someone else does it in his or her spare/own time, do it him/herself, or pay someone to do it.
If this doesn't motivate you, that's your prerogative, of course, but then don't expect your display to motivate someone else to do it, either.

> It shows a rather desperation that we do not see in other languages forums.

Who is "we"? Also, implying that the people pointing out you could contribute if you want something are the ones being "desperate" is - frankly - insulting.
If you don't want to contribute, or don't have the time, that's understandable and fine, but then don't be surprised if others share the sentiment.

>
> Having people write plugins is one thing. Having them supporting those plugins for years to come, that is another.
>
> Its not the actual the written the plugins that is a issue. There are plenty of D plugins out there. But people get discourages, lack of time, run into issues they can not figure out, new D version, new IDE changes... whatever changes that break the plugins.
>
> There are plenty of plugins for almost every editor/ide but few are well supported because it ends up being one man development teams.

This is a good description of the problem's complexity, but it doesn't change the facts that people work on what they want to work on in their free time and most main/long/old D users seem mostly content with their current workflow, so it's up to new users to change things for the better here. Writing about it and trying to gather support is a good first step (that has happened multiple times in the past years), but unless it's backed up by a coordinated effort, it won't yield any tangible results.

> So what is the point in pushing people: write plugins, put time into them, ... when even the people know that with there day job, family life they can not keep supporting / expanding the plugins.

False premise about "pushing" people. Other than that: Everything is temporary - especially in IT - the important question is can you get a good ROI on the time you spend writing your plugin.
I, e.g., invested about 10 hours to write my D plugin for Sublime Text 3 [1], and I've already saved enough time using it that its ROI is positive.

> It feels like this approach is just wrong... When people are motivated, they so so from themselves and do not need the "gentle" pushing on a forum to do so.

Again the false premise of a "push". The intention here is not to motivate anyone, it's to explain the situation and your options.

[1] https://github.com/Calrama/sublide
August 09, 2017
Maybe i made myself not very clear. Sorry about that.

I mention this as reading topics here shows the same behavior. People complain. Specific people here keep responding how the complainer needs to do it themselves or pay for it. Tracing the people that "complained" there post history, shows that most of them simply do not post anymore, after being told to do it themselves.

I do not want to wast people there time, i only responded to this here because its obvious pattern. I agree that this seems to be a very small community and it is hard to get things done in a small community. But it is counter productive to constantly tell people that there is no solution, they need to do it or pay for it. Its like hearing a broken record that keeps skipping to the same beat.

People who have the time and willingness to do so, WILL do it themselves without being told on a forum. All the rest is simply negative PR for the people who lurk ( not post ) and read the comments.

The 'we' refers to me and my colleague. And 'we' do mean that the amount of posting here that ask people to do the work is way more then on other language forums. We understand the reasoning but its about first impressions. And when anybody reads comments stating the above too many times, it simply feels like the community is too small to support the language. Causation and effect. The more pushing does not result in more people actually contributing. It can have the reverse effect of actually pushing people away.

Its beating a dead horse because i expect that months from now, the same pattern will still be here. Need to get back to actual work or the boss will be less happy. And that person pushing that much more effect :)
August 09, 2017
On Wednesday, 9 August 2017 at 07:59:46 UTC, Ryion wrote:
> And that person pushing has much more effect :)

And a actual forum with a edit button may also be useful. Instead of this mail system.
August 09, 2017
You can write it yourself :P, or pay someone to do it for you.

On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 10:02 AM, Ryion via Digitalmars-d < digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:

> On Wednesday, 9 August 2017 at 07:59:46 UTC, Ryion wrote:
>
>> And that person pushing has much more effect :)
>>
>
> And a actual forum with a edit button may also be useful. Instead of this mail system.
>


August 09, 2017
On Wednesday, 9 August 2017 at 07:59:46 UTC, Ryion wrote:
> Maybe i made myself not very clear. Sorry about that.
>
> I mention this as reading topics here shows the same behavior. People complain. Specific people here keep responding how the complainer needs to do it themselves or pay for it. Tracing the people that "complained" there post history, shows that most of them simply do not post anymore, after being told to do it themselves.
>
> I do not want to wast people there time, i only responded to this here because its obvious pattern. I agree that this seems to be a very small community and it is hard to get things done in a small community. But it is counter productive to constantly tell people that there is no solution, they need to do it or pay for it. Its like hearing a broken record that keeps skipping to the same beat.

The same question will get the same answer unless the facts change, I'm sorry if you feel that this sounds like a broken record.

>
> People who have the time and willingness to do so, WILL do it themselves without being told on a forum. All the rest is simply negative PR for the people who lurk ( not post ) and read the comments.

The choices on our side when responding to people complaining about / asking for missing things are AFAICT
a) Not respond to people asking/complaining about these things
b) Inform them about the situation and explain their options
I believe b) to be the sane choice here.

>
> The 'we' refers to me and my colleague. And 'we' do mean that the amount of posting here that ask people to do the work is way more then on other language forums. We understand the reasoning but its about first impressions. And when anybody reads comments stating the above too many times, it simply feels like the community is too small to support the language. Causation and effect.

The community is large enough to support the language, which you can see plainly when you inspect D frontend and compiler(s) steady development, as well as the clearance rate of issues.
It's just not large enough to support all kinds of "do this for me" third party feature requests.

> The more pushing does not result in more people actually contributing. It can have the reverse effect of actually pushing people away.

Again with this false premise of "pushing"; stating facts is not pushing.
Examples of pushing: "please do this (for me/us)", "you should do this (for me/us)", etc.
If people think they are being pushed away by a rational text, then that is indeed sad, but that is their choice.

> Its beating a dead horse because i expect that months from now, the same pattern will still be here. [...]

They'll get a reply matching the situation at that future time, I expect.
August 09, 2017
On Wednesday, 9 August 2017 at 08:22:05 UTC, Daniel Kozak wrote:
> You can write it yourself :P, or pay someone to do it for you.
>
> On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 10:02 AM, Ryion via Digitalmars-d < digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday, 9 August 2017 at 07:59:46 UTC, Ryion wrote:
>>
>>> And that person pushing has much more effect :)
>>>
>>
>> And a actual forum with a edit button may also be useful. Instead of this mail system.

Since the underlying technology is newsgroups (and this is unlikely to change) you could indeed try to map editing in the web interface (forum) to cancel the message posting (newsgroups support this) and send the edited one as a new one.
August 09, 2017
On 09.08.2017 09:59, Ryion wrote:
> Specific people here keep responding how the complainer needs to do it themselves or pay for it.

This is usually after the complainer tells others to do it for him/her, sometimes using strong language.

The current thread is particularly peculiar, as it adds an additional indirection: the poster asks others to ask someone else to do the work. :)

> Tracing the people that "complained" there post history, shows that most of them simply do not post anymore, after being told to do it themselves.

The threads they spawn are often not very interesting.

> All the rest is simply negative PR for the people who lurk ( not post ) and read the comments.

It is also a common pattern for the complainers to point out how not fixing their pet peeve will result in negative PR or reduced popularity. As if everyone here was somehow more deeply invested in D's popularity than in its quality. I find that to be a bit irritating.
August 09, 2017
On Sunday, 6 August 2017 at 16:02:16 UTC, Dmitry wrote:
> On Sunday, 6 August 2017 at 13:54:43 UTC, 12345swordy wrote:
>> On Sunday, 6 August 2017 at 07:04:34 UTC, Dmitry wrote:
>>> Visual D also has some problems that sensitive for newbies. For example, no DUB support.
>>
>> What are you talking about? dub generates solution files for visual d. Of course visual d has DUB support, you just have to generate the solution files via command line.
>
> And what then? Later I need add 10 libraries more - what I should to do?

You edit the json file of course. That how DUB generates solution files for visual D and other IDE's.
August 09, 2017
On Wednesday, August 09, 2017 17:13:37 Timon Gehr via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> It is also a common pattern for the complainers to point out how not fixing their pet peeve will result in negative PR or reduced popularity. As if everyone here was somehow more deeply invested in D's popularity than in its quality. I find that to be a bit irritating.

If anything, most of us are more invested in its quality than its popularity. Those of us who spend our time contributing to the code base or writing our personal projects in D care a great deal about its quality, and while we may care about how popular it is, that obviously wasn't what brought us here. Having D popular would be nice, but it's not necessary for us to be doing what we've been doing. And the reality of the matter is that most of us don't have the proper skillset for improving D's popularity. We're engineers, not marketing people.

If someone has an issue that prevents them from using D, then that matters, but it needs to be taken in the context of everything else, and honestly, if doing something to make the language more popular means reducing its quality, I'd rather that it have higher quality. Ideally, having higher quality would help improve its popularity, but unfortunately, things don't always work that way.

Regardless, we're here because we want a quality language, not because we want a popular one. We just hope that those two things aren't mutually exclusive.

- Jonathan M Davis