Spreading the word about D

Sean Kelly sean at invisibleduck.org
Mon Jun 23 11:43:12 PDT 2008


== Quote from Yigal Chripun (yigal100 at gmail.com)'s article
> Jesse Phillips wrote:
> > On Sun, 22 Jun 2008 17:43:27 +0300, Yigal Chripun wrote:
> >
> >> Robert Fraser wrote:
> >>> 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 outdated pages about the major projects and sites for D, and if they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.
> >> vote +100
> >>
> >> Also, what about using Google groups?
> >
> > There is a D programming group on Google groups. The probably is that no
> > one is there. There are people signed up for it, like 60, but the help
> > seems to come from the ng so there isn't much point posting there. As of
> > right now, I can tell you there is no spam coming in. I even set it up te
> > send me emails upon any message posting since activity is so low. It
> > would be great to see the news move in my opinion.
> This is not exactly what I suggested. no need to split the community to
> different places. I actually thought of /mirroring/ the NG on Google
> gropus. I know that other projects do that. Basically using the Google
> groups instead of the current [crappy] web news system as another
> front-end to the NG.

I've requested that Google Groups pick up the DigitalMars newsgroups before
but had no success.


Sean



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