Spreading the word about D

[Robert Fraser]

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Clay Smith" <clayasaurus at gmail.com> wrote in message 
> news:g3jrs4$402$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> Couldn't find a specific thread devoted to this topic, so started.
>>
>> What do you think is the best way to promote D?
>>
>> Here are some ideas I already know about and have seen used successfully.
>>
>> 1. Articles - Write D articles and post on digg/reddit
>> 2. Tutorials - Teach D newcomers how to use D
>> 3. Libraries - Write a library for D / help out an existing D library
>>
>> Here is a link that is also relevant to the subject: 
>> http://www.digitalmars.com/d/howto-promote.html
>>
>> I'm wondering, what are all the awesome, zany, weird, or unique ways you 
>> can think of to promote the D language? Did I cover everything? Are there 
>> more effective ways of promoting the language?
>>
> 
> I agree with all of the "libraries" stuff said before. But I'd also add a 
> couple other things:
> 
> It's been brought up before, but the official webpage needs to be maintained 
> better, particularly from the perspective of a D newbie.  Don't get me 
> wrong, this isn't an attack on Walter's web work or anything. It's just that 
> D has all this good stuff, like Wiki4D, Chris's snapshots, DFL, etc, but no 
> ones going to be finding these things unless they actually commit the time 
> amd effort to really dig around the scene and stumble upon them.
> 
> Think about it this way: If a person hears about "this cool new D language" 
> and decides they want to know more about it, where are they going to go? 
> They're going to go find the official D site. (Maybe it's just me, but if I 
> want to learn about a language, finding the official site would be my first 
> step.) But then they get there and see these outdated pages about the major 
> projects and sites for D, and if they stumble upon, for instance, Chris's D 
> Snapshots and DSource instead of Elephant and the crappy newsgroup 
> web-interface, well then that's just by pure luck rather than design.
> 
> Which brings up another thing. Newsgroups aren't very inviting. If Johnny 
> Newbie goes to site "BB" and sees a well-designed web-based message board, 
> and goes to site "CC" and sees "here's the server and group name for our 
> newsgroup" (interestingly, I can't even seem to find the page that says that 
> right now - just direct links into the not-very-good web-reader) or even 
> worse: a mailing list, then he's gonna be a lot more likely to join in on 
> community "BB". I know I would. So...I'm not saying we should switch from 
> newsgoups to a message board. I'm just saying, if we're going to stick with 
> newsgroups, then getting a better web-interface should be a priority. 

I think Walter needs to let someone in the community take over (at least 
partially) the main D page... someone with web design skills ;-P. And 
the backend for a newsreader would make an interesting D project, as well.