Now that the last talk from DConf is up, I thought it might be a good time to review them, as someone who didn't attend.

From the standpoint of a D conference, the worst talk was Walter's.  It was clearly aimed at a non-D audience, so there was nothing new there for a D audience: I'm guessing it's a familiar talk he gives to outside groups.  However, as a recording on the internet, it might be the best talk for newbies, as an introduction to the language, as every other talk goes deeper into the language.

I wish Walter had done a real technical talk on his experiences developing D and dmd, as he is a font of knowledge on many technical topics, rather than a basic overview of D.  Maybe next year, perhaps he can talk about porting dmd to D. :)

The rest of the first day's talks were interesting looks at various technical issues.  Ben loves testing a bit too much, ;) I suspect that a distributed approach like Robert's is the future.  Didn't realize there was so much to copying and moving till I watched Ali's talk, still not sure I grasp all of it.  Good to see a different approach to GC by Leandro.

I was underwhelmed by Manu's talk: too much low-level technical detail about the integration effort between C++ and D, not enough discussion of the benefits of using D.  The Q&A panel with Walter and Andrei should have been an hour, or until questions petered out, and held every day of DConf. :)

Vladimir's talk was the highlight of the second day for me, a great mix of technical material and exploring the current state of related D libraries.  Adam's talk was enjoyable, a nice look at D through C# eyes.  Iain and Rainer's talks were interesting; started watching but haven't finished Martin and Maxime's talks yet, not that interested in shared libraries or JITs but I'll finish them later.

Don's talk was the best of the conference: great mix of technical material, pragmatic considerations, and humor.  The title was horrible though, wasn't expecting much from a talk on "metaprogramming," was pleasantly surprised when the topic was barely talked about.  Nice overview of SIMD by Manu and LLVM/LDC by Nadlinger.  Simcha's talk was well done but I wonder if I'd ever use any of those higher-level patterns; good to hear what Stefane's team is up to with static analysis.

Andrei, as usual, was very good, though there was too much structure and boilerplate for me, however little there was compared to his usual talk.  The bits about scaling to a million users through "professionalism" were weird for a volunteer effort though.

All in all, a great effort, looking forward to the next one.

This may be OT since I'm not offering opinions on individual talks, but I really enjoyed the talks and want to say thanks for posting them online for us non-attendees to enjoy.  I know Andrei was using them as an analogy, but his comments about the professionalism of the AV crew were spot on--they did a fantastic job.

Great conference!

On Tue, 25 Jun 2013 16:18:44 +0100, Joakim <joakim@airpost.net> wrote:

> Now that the last talk from DConf is up, I thought it might be a good time to review them, as someone who didn't attend.

I don't have anything specific to say about any of the talks in particular (constructive or otherwise).  I enjoyed them all to varying degrees (based mainly on how applicable they were to me personally :P).

I respect the time, effort and courage it takes to do a talk - especially one which is subsequently shared online with a wider community - so I wanted to say a big THANK YOU to everyone involved.

Regan

-- 
Using Opera's revolutionary email client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

On 25 June 2013 16:18, Joakim <joakim@airpost.net> wrote:
> Now that the last talk from DConf is up, I thought it might be a good time to review them, as someone who didn't attend.
>
> From the standpoint of a D conference, the worst talk was Walter's.  It was clearly aimed at a non-D audience, so there was nothing new there for a D audience: I'm guessing it's a familiar talk he gives to outside groups. However, as a recording on the internet, it might be the best talk for newbies, as an introduction to the language, as every other talk goes deeper into the language.
>
> I wish Walter had done a real technical talk on his experiences developing D and dmd, as he is a font of knowledge on many technical topics, rather than a basic overview of D.  Maybe next year, perhaps he can talk about porting dmd to D. :)
>

Actually, when having coffee between myself, Brad, Walter and Manu before the conference.  I'm pretty certain he mentioned feeling a bit odd that he was going to do largely a non-technical talk.  And to be honest, a keynote speech should be kept non-technical.  :)


--
Iain Buclaw

*(p < e ? p++ : p) = (c & 0x0f) + '0';

On Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 15:18:46 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> .
> .
> .
> All in all, a great effort, looking forward to the next one.

I watched and liked 'em all.

But one little thing that comes in mind now is: It really needs this type of conference when we live in Internet era?

It was a U$ 30k event for how many attendees? 100 for a universe of 10k D users?

What I mean is, can't "we" make those videos and share thoughts without conferences, do it monthly to gather attention of more programmers?

If the internet works for open source code, a live meeting over internet wouldn't be possible too?




PS: Sorry my poor english.

On Tue, 25 Jun 2013 12:38:01 -0700, MattCoder <mattcoder@hotmail.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 15:18:46 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> .
>> .
>> .
>> All in all, a great effort, looking forward to the next one.
>
> I watched and liked 'em all.
>
> But one little thing that comes in mind now is: It really needs this type of conference when we live in Internet era?
>
> It was a U$ 30k event for how many attendees? 100 for a universe of 10k D users?
>
> What I mean is, can't "we" make those videos and share thoughts without conferences, do it monthly to gather attention of more programmers?
>
> If the internet works for open source code, a live meeting over internet wouldn't be possible too?
>
>
>
>
> PS: Sorry my poor english.

I think in this internet era it is far to easy to underestimate the power of physical interaction. More got done as a result of the conference than I think would've been possible otherwise. Sometimes you just need to duke it out verbally. :-)

-- 
Adam Wilson
IRC: LightBender
Project Coordinator
The Horizon Project
http://www.thehorizonproject.org/

On Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 19:42:45 UTC, Adam Wilson wrote:
> I think in this internet era it is far to easy to underestimate the power of physical interaction. More got done as a result of the conference than I think would've been possible otherwise. Sometimes you just need to duke it out verbally. :-)


I understand your point, and In fact I think this was (or will be) valuable for D community. But at the same time it's too restrictive, and there is distance and others costs etc.

I just think a live meeting maybe would be a nice try.

On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 12:42:44PM -0700, Adam Wilson wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Jun 2013 12:38:01 -0700, MattCoder <mattcoder@hotmail.com> wrote:
[...]
> >I watched and liked 'em all.
> >
> >But one little thing that comes in mind now is: It really needs this type of conference when we live in Internet era?
> >
> >It was a U$ 30k event for how many attendees? 100 for a universe of 10k D users?
> >
> >What I mean is, can't "we" make those videos and share thoughts without conferences, do it monthly to gather attention of more programmers?
> >
> >If the internet works for open source code, a live meeting over internet wouldn't be possible too?
> >
> >PS: Sorry my poor english.
> 
> I think in this internet era it is far to easy to underestimate the power of physical interaction. More got done as a result of the conference than I think would've been possible otherwise. Sometimes you just need to duke it out verbally. :-)
[...]

I couldn't make it to the conference, but from what I heard, a lot of hatchets were buried and a lot of issues were sorted out as a result of meeting in person. That should never be underestimated. :) In this day and age of online personae, it's all too easy to forget that there are real, living, breathing people behind the personae. Meeting in person has a way of sorting things out in a way no amount of email, forum, or online chat could ever do.


T

-- 
Knowledge is that area of ignorance that we arrange and classify. -- Ambrose Bierce

On Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 19:38:04 UTC, MattCoder wrote:
> But one little thing that comes in mind now is: It really needs this type of conference when we live in Internet era?
>
> It was a U$ 30k event for how many attendees? 100 for a universe of 10k D users?
>
> What I mean is, can't "we" make those videos and share thoughts without conferences, do it monthly to gather attention of more programmers?
>
> If the internet works for open source code, a live meeting over internet wouldn't be possible too?
I agree, a physical conference is positively anachronistic in this day and age.  So much of D is done online, no reason these talks couldn't be done that way too.  That said, the last D conference was in 2007: it does make sense to get together in person at least once every six years, ;) at least for those who go in for that sort of thing.

On 6/25/2013 12:58 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> I couldn't make it to the conference, but from what I heard, a lot of
> hatchets were buried and a lot of issues were sorted out as a result of
> meeting in person. That should never be underestimated. :) In this day
> and age of online personae, it's all too easy to forget that there are
> real, living, breathing people behind the personae. Meeting in person
> has a way of sorting things out in a way no amount of email, forum, or
> online chat could ever do.

+1

The conference was immensely valuable.

The presentations themselves are just the sparks. The real stuff happens in discussions before and after.

It's like something a friend of mine told me. He realized after a few years that the real business of the company he worked for happened at lunch, and that by bringing his own and eating it at his desk he wound up sabotaging his career.

BTW, personally I'm a lot more free with my thoughts & opinions when I'm not being recorded for posterity and data mining, as happens with all online interactions. There's a lot to be said for meeting people off the record to get those sausages made :-)