Today the Hobbyist, Tommorow, The World!

Kyle Furlong kylefurlong at gmail.com
Wed May 3 11:42:22 PDT 2006


Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> 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".
>

How would you quantify this? Then once you do, where would you place DMD?

>>
>> 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.
> 

While its true that no one person has a *right* to assert authority over 
anyone else in this context, it may be benificial to self organize into 
a more centralized team in order to produce higher quality code in a 
much shorter time span.

Obviously no one can compel anyone else to do anything.

>> 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.
> 
> 
> 
> 

My idea for the mascot is along the lines of something that will stick 
in people's heads. So, if a logo can do this, fine. But, in my 
experience, (which admittedly, is quite small) a mascot has more power 
to hold itself in a persons mind than a logo.

If D-man does this, fine.

-- 
Kyle Furlong // Physics Undergrad, UCSB

"D is going wherever the D community wants it to go." - Walter Bright



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