D : Not for me anymore

[Kristian]

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 00:16:53 +0300, Georg Wrede <georg.wrede at nospam.org>  
wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> Knud Sørensen wrote:
>>> clayasaurus wrote:
>>>> Knud Sørensen wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> What about the library contest I suggested long ago ?? Is that a  
>>>>> useful idea?
>>>>
>>>> How about a "Top 10 D libraries" page on digitalmars D where the D  
>>>> community votes for the top 10 libraries each month on the newsgroups  
>>>> and then they get a very special recognition on the digitalmars site?
>>>
>>> Yes, a monthly competition like this is also a good idea.
>>>
>>> We have several authors on the list maybe we can get them to donate a  
>>> copy of one of there books for a first prize.
>>  I've thought about cash prizes and contests. I just had the nagging  
>> feeling that the result would be a circus rather than serious  
>> development.
>
> A library contest would be far too much work _both_ for the  
> administrators and for the programmers.
>
> For any non-trivial stuff it would necessarily drag out over months (if  
> not quarters), and get psychologically diluted -- especially knowing  
> that most (not all) of the contestants are of the breed "get quickly  
> enthused and equally quickly disinterested". (Just look at the number of  
> started projects at, say dsource, versus actual progress in most of  
> them.)
>
> A bit more demanding on the "establishment", but a lot more rewarding  
> for our end goal would be to have contests on smaller units! Such would  
> be individual classes, maybe groups of functions, or even  
> very-narrow-purpose libraries. There should also be a separate, on-going  
> series for single functions!!
>
> The administration would be more work, granted. And choosing the contest  
> items would require much more work if we wanted to stay determined on  
> keeping in mind the end-goals and overall progress of the D effort.


I agree. Implementing stuff usually takes a lot more time than you  
originally thought it would.

And what if we end up with 10 good versions of a single library? If we  
keep just one (or two), there will be a lot of work 'wasted'.

I think the most important thing conserning libraries is their API, not  
how they are internally implemented. Of course, the API and the  
implementation are usually intertwined, and you have think what may be  
needed in the future too. Library should be simple and easy to use, yet  
flexible and extendable. That's not an easy task, I think. ;)

So maybe we should have contents on APIs first. When we got the base  
structure right, we can make competitions on parts (e.g. functions,  
classes) that should be efficient, or hard to implement. Bulk (trivial)  
stuff can be implemented outside the competitions later. Also, API  
implementations should include documentation.