Today the Hobbyist, Tommorow, The World!

[Walter Bright]

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.

Java also had a billion dollars behind it and pushing. And as they say 
in the Air Force, with enough power even a brick outhouse will fly <g>.

> 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.

That isn't my attitude at all. I spend probably half of each day 
evangelizing the language. This involves:

1) identifying influential people in the programming community who could 
be interested in D, and letting them know about it

2) talking with webmasters of relevant programming sites to try to get D 
mentioned on their sites

3) preparing presentations, giving them

4) watching for relevant discussions coming up outside of our local 
newsgroups

5) in general, trying to ensure that D has a strong presence on the internet

I think this has been reasonably successful. A year ago, it was normal 
for people to have never heard of D. Now, it is normal for people to 
have heard of D, but not know much about it. The next step is to help 
them know more about it.

I know some of you are out there doing the same thing, and that is very 
helpful. More would be better, of course!


> 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.

I agree, there's plenty of room for improvement there.

> 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.

That's fine with me.

> 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.

I initially tried another name ("Mars"). Everyone called it D anyway. 
"D" fits exactly what it is, the next step after C++. Besides, there is 
far too much momentum already behind calling it D to think of changing. 
I know that googling "D" is hopeless, which is why I strongly encourage 
using the phrase "D programming language" as much as possible on D 
related postings and web pages.


> 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.

I'm not exactly a professional artist <g>.

> 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.

I like the look of 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.

Plans for improvement should plan on it being implementable on an 
incremental basis.