D : Not for me anymore

[Georg Wrede]

John Reimer wrote:
> On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 23:55:55 -0700, Walter Bright wrote:
>> John Reimer wrote:
>>
>>> Shame on you, Walter.  You should know better than to think you
>>> have that much influence. ;D
>>
>> If I'm not going to actively manage something, it's best not to get  
>> involved with it, as such tends to discourage others from taking the  
>> lead on it. They assume I will.
> 
> Understood.
> 
>>> The momentum died for strictly different reasons (most notable
>>> being the lack of contributors).
>>
>> Lack of contributors is why most things wither. The more interesting  
>> question is why the lack of contributors. I had (incorrectly) thought  
>> that endorsing DWT would lead to more contributors and a more  
>> concentrated effort to get it done. The opposite seemed to happen.
> 
> Good question.  I never quite figured that one out either.  I guess, 
> like  others have said, SWT, as powerful as it is, just isn't that popular.

Dunno about others, but, IIRC, at the time it felt labourious to use, 
and non-portable. Thus, such an Official choice was, ehh, depressing.

>>> Your choice and timing just
>>> happened to be off on the matter. Okay, I admit that there was one
>>> other significant issue that was a personal annoyance: you failed
>>> to contact or discuss /anything/ with the people considering the
>>> ports of DWT (myself, Carlos ). You just announced the ports and
>>> that we were doing them (even though you had no idea what are
>>> personal feelings on the matter were or how serious we were about
>>> it).  I recall being quite shocked at your announcement. I think
>>> Carlos was too.
>>
>> I'm sorry about that. I had incorrectly just assumed you'd be pleased 
>> by  it. I wanted to support you guys' efforts.
> 
> Ah, I forgive you.  I thank you for trying to support our efforts even 
> if  it didn't work out quite right.
> 
>>> Regardless, we all know that GUI Frameworks are particularly
>>> troublesome to endorse since the area is so subjective.  It's
>>> probably a lost cause trying to support one over the other.  Best
>>> to encourage any GUI that people are willing to develop for D
>>> because I don't think any one framework will be acceptable as a
>>> standard.
>>
>> That's where we're at now. There are several D gui's, too many for 
>> this  community to really support properly.
> 
> I'm not so sure there are too many GUI's to support properly.  I think 
> it doesn't matter how many or few there are.

When I moved from VIC-20 to Kaypro-II, I had to switch from 6502 
assembler to either Z-80 assembler or 8080 assembler. (Both were used 
"interchangeably" on the Z-80 on the Kaypro. And I didn't want to use 
both.) In hindsight, I spent so much time dithering between the two, 
that merely a toss of a coin at the start would have made the end result 
much happier. The same thing happened with Basic. On the VIC, I only had 
[a primitive version of] Microsoft Basic, whereas on the Kaypro, I had 2 
versions of M$ interpreted Basic, a truly compiled basic ("C-basic"), 
and a (Java like) compiled but still interpreted Basic ("S-basic"). I 
couldn't make up my mind. (Today, I'd have used each of them for 
separate purposes. :-) ) The dithering didn't stop until a friend gave 
me a stolen copy of Turbo Pascal, v.2. (And yes, I've since repaid my 
debt to Borland several times beyond my legal obligations!)

>>> As for standard libraries, I think you should be ready to endorse
>>> an organized effort

...

>> I encourage, and have encouraged, anyone who wants to do this. Any or  
>> all parts of Phobos can be used as a starting point. The compiler is 
>> my  central focus, to enable great libraries to be written.

In the last years I've heard people ask and ask about this all over 
again. It's almost like people wanted to be asking till they get a no 
for an answer.

> Thank you for stating that here.  It's very much appreciated, as is all 
> of  your work.  I know you've stated it in so many words before, but 
> sometimes  repitition seems to be the only way to get things across in a 
> newsgroup  where posts quickly get lost in the pile.

By this time somebody simply ought to just go ahead and set up the 
repository.
Like Nike: "just do it"!