Today the Hobbyist, Tommorow, The World!

[Bruno Medeiros]

First of all, don't call it "hobbyists" :P  We are all "early adopters", 
and for most of us D is more than hobby (even if the allocated time is 
similar). Hobbyism and hobby programs for me is the trivial stuff I 
write in the Bash shell scripting language (which sucks BTW).


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.
> 

Matureness must come before marketing.
Still, early "evangelism", as Walter put it, (which I consider different 
from marketing) is important and does come before matureness, since 
attracting a good number of (and an influential set of) early adopters 
is crucial to achieve matureness and "goodness".

> 
> 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.
> 

True, and here is something were a lot of the work could be done 
independent of Walter (unlike for instance helping with the compiler, 
which requires significant interaction)

> 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.
> 

Huh? "Formation of a GUI team"? That doesn't make sense.
Formation by whom and of whom? You speak as if Walter had control over 
this issues. Unlike the other points, he hasn't. No one here has 
authority over the work of the rest of the community, since no one is 
paying anyone *else* for that work). The only thing Walter can do is 
"bless" a project he deems more acceptable, which doesn't have much 
practical effect.

GUI community development strategies must be considered on the face that 
the GUI community is a collaborative structure, and not a 
centralized-authoritative structure

No one can exert control of the GUI (or any other for that matter) 
development, but the community *can come* to certain levels of agreement.

> 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.
> 

A logo is an important marketing and even recognition item, agreed. I 
just bring a small issue: does the logo necessarily has to an 
animal/mascot? I'm thinking it doesn't, any type of logo would do.




-- 
Bruno Medeiros - CS/E student
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D