DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition

[Nicholas Wilson]

On Tuesday, 25 December 2018 at 05:01:43 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> On Monday, 24 December 2018 at 22:22:08 UTC, Steven 
> Schveighoffer wrote:
> The 0.1% of the community that attend seem to like it, the vast 
> majority don't, or at least don't care.

You think we have 200k users? More to the point you neglect the 
benefit of development and progress is shared by all users.

>>> 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.

I agree this does need to happen, the foundation will be having a 
another meeting in Feb to set the vision, which I hope will be a 
little more planned and productive than the last one.

>> 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.

Some additional transparency would help, Mike?

>>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.

I'll give my reasons:
I got a job out of it.
I got useful insight into various bits of the compiler.
I got connections for collaboration with stuff that I'm 
interested.

> If you're making a bad decision, it _should_ be questioned.

Indeed, but none of us think DConf is a bad idea or that the 
format doesn't work for us.

> Almost nothing that has been decided so far would stop most of 
> my three suggestions from still being implemented.

You haven't managed to convince us that that would be an 
improvement.

> 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.

I totally agree, but again, you haven't convinced us that it is 
an improvement.

> 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.

That reasoning is backwards: in our experience DConf, as done in 
the past, works, and it works well. The onus is on you to 
convince us that it would work better the way you describe.

> 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?

What works at one scale doesn't necessarily work at another. To 
do something very different from a "traditional" conference would 
be a significant risk when what we have works well. As noted 
previously your opinions would carry more weight if you had 
actually attended a past 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?

I don't knowhow many times we have to say it: we do not feel the 
conference format is outdated.

> 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.

It is a pity you think that, I found sone of the talks very 
interesting. Yes quality of the speaker and intrigue of the topic 
varies but such is life.

>>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. ;)

More's the pity.