DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition

[Joakim]

On Monday, 24 December 2018 at 22:22:08 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer 
wrote:
> On 12/24/18 2:44 AM, Joakim wrote:
>> On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 22:36:05 UTC, Steven 
>> Schveighoffer wrote:
>>>
>>> Huh? It's their decision, not yours. Even if the decision has 
>>> no reason at all, it's still theirs. What is the problem? 
>>> Start your own D "conference competitor" if you think you can 
>>> do better.
>> 
>> They are accountable to the community, so the decision and its 
>> reasons matter.
>
> My impression is that the community likes and benefits from 
> these conferences, so everything's cool there.

The 0.1% of the community that attend seem to like it, the vast 
majority don't, or at least don't care.

>> I, for one, will not be donating to the foundation as long as 
>> they continue to waste money this way, just as others have 
>> said they won't donate as long as it doesn't put out a Vision 
>> document anymore or otherwise communicate what it's doing with 
>> their money.
>
> Nobody is asking for your money for this conference (unless you 
> want to attend), and if you feel this way, that's totally your 
> choice.

I'm not talking about the registration fee, I'm talking about 
contributing anything to the foundation, which Walter indicates 
above covers some of the expenses for DConf.

>I like the results that come from the conferences, I've
> been to all of them since 2013, on my dime for 3, and with 
> assistance for 3. I felt it was 100% worth it for all.

Yet you cannot give a single reason _why_ you felt it was worth 
it, or why my suggestions wouldn't make it better.

>>> Nobody cares to debate something that has already been 
>>> scheduled and planned, the time to bring up concerns was 
>>> earlier, when you brought it up before. But that failed to 
>>> convince, now it's decided, time to move on.
>> 
>> So you agree with me that there's no point in "debating" it 
>> again, perhaps you should have addressed this comment to Mike 
>> then?
>
> Mike didn't start the debate in this thread, you did.

I did no such thing: I asked for the reasons _why_ the decision 
was made, considering the previous debate. That is not restarting 
the debate, simply asking for the rationale. Others then tried to 
debate me again, and while I did respect them enough to engage 
with their arguments, I repeatedly pointed out that I wasn't 
looking to debate it again.

> Consider how one feels when careful deliberation is made, and a 
> final decision, combined with an announcement is made. Would 
> you like to have people question your decisions AFTER they are 
> made, and commitments have already been established? The time 
> to question them is before they are made, not after. 
> Questioning after is simply viewed (rightly) as sour grapes. 
> You didn't get your way, move on.

If you're making a bad decision, it _should_ be questioned. 
Almost nothing that has been decided so far would stop most of my 
three suggestions from still being implemented.

As for how they feel about it, I don't care. The reason most 
projects and companies fail is because the decision-making 
process stops being about putting out a good product but about 
"feelings" and various people "saving face," especially when 
higher up the hierarchy, ie politics. And don't make up some 
nonsense that I'm saying that it's okay if everybody starts 
cursing each other out like Linus did: we're talking about 
_questioning a decision_. That is the whole point of having a 
community.

The day this community starts being more about saving face is the 
day I leave it, as that's the beginning of the end, and I don't 
want to be around for that end.

>>>> If it's such a great idea, that should be an easy case to 
>>>> make, compared to the alternatives given. Yet all I get is a 
>>>> bunch of stone-walling, suggesting no reasoning was actually 
>>>> involved, just blindly aping others and the past.
>>>
>>> It is easy, for those who have attended conferences and like 
>>> them -- they work well. All past dconfs are shining examples. 
>>> Just drop it and move on to something else. You lost the 
>>> battle for this one, it's no longer up for discussion.
>> 
>> Heh, there was no "battle," as most of those responding didn't 
>> even understand what I wrote, like Iain above, gave no 
>> arguments (we "like them -- they work well"), and as finally 
>> clear from Mike and Walter's responses here, there was no real 
>> deliberation on the matter.
>
> You think they just flipped a coin one day, and didn't think 
> about any past experience at all? No real thinking must have 
> gone into it because only intelligent people can come to the 
> conclusion you reached, right? This kind of "debate" where the 
> assumption is that only my way is correct is common out there 
> these days, it's tiring.

Not at all, the whole reason I'm willing to debate is that other 
worthwhile perspectives may be out there. I think the evidence 
and arguments strongly favor the suggestions I'm putting forward, 
but I'm perfectly willing to consider other arguments.

That is the same stance they should have, but don't appear to. My 
problem with this "debate" is that nobody was able to defend the 
current DConf format at all.

Consider some of Walter's silly arguments above: at one point he 
says he wants "successful instantiations of your theories," 
implying that these are all things I'm just talking about and 
nobody's doing them, though it's not clear which aspects he 
thinks that of since I've presented evidence for much of it.

But at another point, he says that other D meetups are already 
doing something I suggest (I pointed out that he's wrong about 
that one, but let's assume he believes it), so there's no reason 
for DConf to do it. First of all, 95+% of D meetups appear to 
follow the DConf format of having a single speaker lecture to a 
room, so why isn't that an argument against doing that yet again 
at DConf?

Secondly and more importantly, he's speaking out of both sides of 
his mouth: do you want to do something that nobody else's doing 
or that somebody has done? You can't argue _both_ that you don't 
want to do what others are doing and what nobody else is doing. 
And why wouldn't the former apply much more to the outdated DConf 
format?

> The best thing you can do is start a competing conference style 
> and show how it works better. I'm sure Walter and Andrei would 
> not discourage more D conferences or conference-like gatherings.

This is unrealistic: D has limited resources, better to 
restructure DConf itself. I have already offered to pitch in with 
implementing my suggestions for DConf, in the linked forum thread 
above.

>> Since they don't take DConf seriously, I see no reason to 
>> either: I'll just start ignoring it from now on.
>
> That's unfortunate, but not anything I can change.

It's not just because of this, this is merely the final straw. I 
have felt that the talks were mostly not worth my time at the 
last couple Dconfs, that is the main reason.

I see a lot of bait-and-switch going on, where the talks 
advertise something interesting, then talk about something else. 
There doesn't appear to be any attempt at quality control for the 
content of the DConf talks, once the presenters have been 
accepted. This is a problem for almost every conference, but it 
only aggravates the huge waste of time that is in-person talks.

>You have
> contributed a lot in terms of the android port, although I 
> haven't really programmed in android (I have a tiny bit, with 
> Xamarin (hated it) and a bit with Java (was OK, but crazy 
> complicated) ). I hope at some point you reconsider, I'd love 
> to see a presentation on it.

See my responses to Nicholas above, I don't think the Android 
port merits a talk. By the same standards I apply to others' 
talks above, I don't think my work merits a talk either. ;)