On 4/10/2017 6:04 PM, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> LOL. IIRC, there have been cases where you and/or Andrei have actually tried
> to get folks to do specific stuff, and it generally hasn't worked. Pretty
> much everything that gets done around here is because someone steps and does
> it.

It pretty much totally doesn't work, even when the person asks "what can I work on?"

It's an interesting management problem, one I've never seen covered in management books, which never seem to cover volunteer organizations.

On Tuesday, 11 April 2017 at 02:20:07 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 4/10/2017 6:04 PM, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> LOL. IIRC, there have been cases where you and/or Andrei have actually tried
>> to get folks to do specific stuff, and it generally hasn't worked. Pretty
>> much everything that gets done around here is because someone steps and does
>> it.
>
> It pretty much totally doesn't work, even when the person asks "what can I work on?"
>
> It's an interesting management problem, one I've never seen covered in management books, which never seem to cover volunteer organizations.

I'd say it is more about politics than management theory. At least in the lower ranks of politics. Local affairs are driven by volunteer work as well.

It usually comes down to charismatic and visionary leaders. Walter and Andrei are good with that, otherwise D would have faltered long ago.

On 2017-04-11 00:07, Walter Bright wrote:

> There are many. A random sampling:
>
> Jacob Carlborg - Objective C support

Actually, this one wasn't my idea originally. It was Michel Fortin that started this work and did most of it. I just did the necessary work to get it merged (the initial version).

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Thursday, 6 April 2017 at 17:56:03 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> On Thursday, 6 April 2017 at 13:55:43 UTC, Olivier FAURE wrote:
>
>> I don't want to make any assumptions, and I do respect Walter for consistently taking on a role that means that people keep criticizing his choices whatever he does, but his approach to dealing with the community is undeniably flawed, and seems to be breeding a lot of frustration and resentment.
>
> IMO the source of the problem is that Walter and Andrei have freedom to make any language changes they want, without even consulting the community, while everyone else has to put a lot of time into a formal proposal with nearly a 100% chance that it will be denied because of [insert your favorite reason]. The design of the language is done in something of a corporate fashion, and that leads to frustrated posts.*

I agree.

I was never personally affected by this (because I haven't contributed to the language or library), but I have heard enough rumours and read enough posts, that see this as problematic (and even frustrated although me not personally touched).

The problem exists probably because D community some years ago reached the scale when only interpersonal non-formal communication doesn't work for managing the development process. I know that Walter is oppose  to any code of conduct, but it is really time for this. The formalization of processes gives transparency and objectivity, very high needed values especially for volunteer community. A depersonification could also go by hand (but not necessary, having a written rule where e.g. Walter personally designated to specific role and exceptions, better that not have rule at all).

The DIP process is very good step in this way, but much more required. E.g. I have heard so much about miserable commit messages of one of pillar developers, that it would be funny if it wouldn't be so sad.

I hope that D community find its good way to interoperate and hence survive.

Alaksiej Stankievič

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.

On 4/11/2017 4:57 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2017-04-11 00:07, Walter Bright wrote:
>
>> There are many. A random sampling:
>>
>> Jacob Carlborg - Objective C support
>
> Actually, this one wasn't my idea originally. It was Michel Fortin that started
> this work and did most of it. I just did the necessary work to get it merged
> (the initial version).

I.e. you self-selected and emerged as the champion of it, and got it done. You're exactly what I'm talking about.

It's not really about ideas, it's about getting **** done, and the people in the D community that get **** done are inevitably the people who decide what gets done.

Something could be the bestest idea evar, but without a champion it is going nowhere.

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. This might upset some individuals, but the alternative, where the community designs the language, could very well be worse.

On Tuesday, 11 April 2017 at 17:28:51 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

> It's not really about ideas, it's about getting **** done, and the people in the D community that get **** done are inevitably the people who decide what gets done.

As I tell students at the start of their dissertation: "You have an idea. You are 1% done. Now you have to go do the other 99% for it to have value to anyone else."

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


T

-- 
This is a tpyo.

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.

The issues I see are communication and delegation, both of which probably come down to the same problem: bus factor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor).  I get the sense that the communication problems come down to reading and responding to a ton of threads, in addition to organizing DConf and doing a bunch of other D scut work, so that you don't have time to fully context switch for each discussion.

Taking a page from Linus, another charismatic visionary (remember we're talking charisma _within tech_ here) who heads the most successful open source project of them all, is probably in order here: choose people to delegate specific roles to and get that stuff off your plate.

Andrei has talked about doing this before, and roles like release manager, now manned by Martin Nowak, and DIP manager, Mike Parker, have been spun off.  I'm guessing Sociomantic has picked up a lot of the DConf management.  But I figure there's more to be done.

I suggest that Walter and Andrei get together and figure out what else they _shouldn't_ be doing and spin those out as specific roles, advertising that they want someone to fill them.  Think of it like putting up a job ad: you must figure out what work needs to be done, specify detailed job roles to do it, then advertise the openings.

I've seen vague calls for help so far, but not anything specific like this.  You may not get anyone to fill these new volunteer roles, but you're more likely to get someone than with the current approach.

Of course, I could be wrong and you've already delegated everything that you want, but I get the sense that isn't so.  As D scales, getting this delegation right is going to be critical.

On Tuesday, 11 April 2017 at 17:28:51 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 4/11/2017 4:57 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>> On 2017-04-11 00:07, Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>>> There are many. A random sampling:
>>>
>>> Jacob Carlborg - Objective C support
>>
>> Actually, this one wasn't my idea originally. It was Michel Fortin that started
>> this work and did most of it. I just did the necessary work to get it merged
>> (the initial version).
>
> I.e. you self-selected and emerged as the champion of it, and got it done. You're exactly what I'm talking about.
>
> It's not really about ideas, it's about getting **** done, and the people in the D community that get **** done are inevitably the people who decide what gets done.
>
> Something could be the bestest idea evar, but without a champion it is going nowhere.

While this is undoubtedly how open source usually works, I'm not sure it's exactly right for D.  For example, there was the checkedint PR that was submitted to Phobos and then rejected by Andrei, only for him to write and merge his own.  You could argue that the author of the original checkedint got 5#!* done, at least in terms of putting up an implementation, but that wasn't enough.  Not saying it was a waste, as it's still up on dub, for anyone who prefers it to use.

Your original description of getting things done is mostly correct, just didn't like you saying it's not "about ideas," because it very clearly is that too.  No doubt you're right that the "bestest idea" won't matter if it's not championed by someone who will build it, but let's not diminish ideas.