Today the Hobbyist, Tommorow, The World!

[John Demme]

Kyle Furlong wrote:

> I'm becoming more and more convinced that D needs a polished presence.
> How did Java succeed? Marketing. Plain and simple, the first revisions
> sucked, but got evangelized extremely effectively. How much better,
> since we have a quality compiler, to market it.
> 
> I think I understand the attitude of Walter and some others. That is,
> that the merits of the language are self evident to the people who it is
> written for, e.g. those who seek will find. So from this point of view,
> marketing is unnecessary, word of mouth about the merits of the language
> will do this work for us.
> 
> While I appreciate this feeling, this mode of operation will only gain
> us a certain base of users, i.e. hobbyists and one man operations who
> can afford to invest in a new language on just its merits. Everyone else
> (read, the majority of the IT world) cannot form decisions only on the
> merits of a compiler. Organizations need reassurances of a polished
> presence. This means documentation, support, packaging, and marketing.
> 
> To this end, I propose the formation of an organization/committee,
> headed by Walter, to guide the process of creating this polished presence.
> 
> Some things which this committee should consider are:
> 
> 1. Unified std library which is 100% covered and stable.
> 
> Aside: I am strongly biased to creating this library out of Ares +
> Mango. No offense Walter, but Sean and Kris' code is higher quality at
> this point.
> 
> 2. Formation of a GUI /team/ to pick and/or develop further a cross
> platform solution.
> 
> Aside: It must be a team. DWT is stagnant because Shawn doesnt have
> time, and no one else understands the code well enough to continue.
> 
> 3. Choice of a new mascot/revamp of D-man. Also consider a new name.
> 
> Aside: I love the name D. But, the benefits of a name bigger than 2
> letters are self evident, it should be considered. Also, D-man has
> served us well. My initial reaction however, when I was first introduced
> to him, was, "Wow, what a trashy mascot, how uncreative." Now that I'm
> used to him, hes alright, but I seriously think we need to reconsider.
> 
> 4. A new/revampped web presence. The combination of
> www.digitalmars.com/d/ and www.dsource.org has worked well for us from
> the standpoint of functionality. However, I think to further the goals
> of a polished presence, we need a presence more along the lines of
> www.php.net.
> 
> Aside: I understand that Walter would like as much traffic to drive his
> click ads, but we could work something out, if it is a big issue. Also,
> this site could also be owned by DigitalMars as well.
> 
> I'm interested to hear dissenting opinions as well as Walter's plans for
> DigitalMars' involvement in the pursuit of D's success in the wider
> world of computing.
> 


I mostly agree, and where I do, I agree very emphatically.

The only point I disagree with is 3... A better D-man would be nice (sorry
Walter) but changing the name is a bad idea.  The name "D" has already made
significant inroads (see TPCI) and we don't want to loose that.

As for point 4, the new look of the digitalmars.com/d site is a vast
improvement on the last one.  It's a great site for DMD, but not for D. 
What we need is a dprogramming.com marketing site, with examples,
tutorials, a beginniner package, and flashy stuff.

~John Demme