Polishing D on Reddit

[Unknown W. Brackets]

The easiest solution is to let small parts of it go until time becomes 
available to really feel like he can spend time.

Example:

Walter might find someone interested in working on frontend or phobos 
bugs.  When looking at bugs or issues, he might triage them and say 
"this doesn't look complicated, and it's fixable entirely in phobos."

Such a bug could easily be assigned to another person.  If Walter finds 
that he's nearing a release and has heard nothing on the bug, he can 
probably take 20 minutes and fix it himself.

But, saving 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there, and just looking over 
people's fixes for the simpler bugs, might free up a bit of time and 
help him decide if he is comfortable with expanding that sort of situation.

Unlike people, bugs are not all made equal.  It doesn't take a big, 
cool, state of the art hammer to squash them all.  Some can be taken 
care of just as effectively with a dusty old shoe.

But, being proactive and telling someone, "I want you to fix this for 
me" is going to get him places "if you feel like helping please do" 
never will.  Volunteers like responsibility, elsewise they wouldn't 
volunteer.

Only, as always, my opinion of course.  But with SMF, which was entirely 
volunteer, people didn't do anything until they were given something as 
a responsibility.  And when they were, they were proud to be and really 
put effort into it.  It can be really inspiring.

-[Unknown]


Georg Wrede wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> Unknown W. Brackets wrote:
>>  > http://www.unknownbrackets.com/tutorials/polishing-d
> 
> I entirely agree with the article.
> 
> Virtually all of the things mentioned have been discussed repeatedly on 
> this NG, in several episodes, some throughout this millennium.
> 
> I can however, from my own experience in similar situations, relate to 
> Walter's subjective situation as the central spider on his "web". Any 
> time he considers doing any of the mentioned things, it *feels* like it 
> would be time wasted because the Main thing (i.e. developing D and DMD) 
> suffer. It doesn't help that one *cognitively* knows that fixing them 
> once and for all literally is more important than a month's worth of 
> D/DMD development. It's simply a case of heart and mind disagreeing. And 
> as we all know, it's the heart that wins.
> 
> 
> What can I say? I simply suggest that Walter take four weeks /totally/ 
> off from the development, and prints out the article, and sets out to 
> fix each single issue, ticking them off with a ball-point pen as they're 
> covered.