working on the dlang.org website

Chad Joan chadjoan at gmail.com
Wed Jul 17 00:46:27 PDT 2013


On Monday, 15 July 2013 at 06:53:37 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2013-07-14 23:18, Val Markovic wrote:
>
>> 3. Ruby on Rails (or Django or any other web framework that 
>> dynamically
>> builds a server response) would be a terrible choice for a 
>> static
>> website. It would be nothing but overhead for no benefit. 
>> Nothing on
>> dlang.org <http://dlang.org> is dynamically generated, nothing 
>> talks to
>> a database (nor should it). The site can and should be 
>> generated from
>> some simple markup language. The end result should be HTML, 
>> CSS, JS and
>> image files that are then just served by the simplest of 
>> servers.
>
> Why not? We're limiting our self here. Someone talked about 
> adding comments to the documentation, like PHP has. Or do you 
> want to use a database that JavaScript can talk to directly, to 
> avoid server side scripts?

Please no RoR/PHP/JavaScript/etc.  It's already hard enough to 
contribute to this thing as it is.  These would add a bunch of 
dependencies for little gain, and possibly a bunch of alienation.

As a user, I really don't want my browsing experience slowed down 
by that stuff either.

I could maybe see using D+vibe.d, but only because it wouldn't 
introduce a new ecosystem of languages/tools.  It's also based on 
D and should be reasonably fast (and if it isn't: something 
failed; start over).

<rambling>
I think what really needs to be addressed though is the build 
system, checkout process, and maintainer's documentation (ex: 
README).  I've experienced a lot of contribution difficulty too.  
It makes the whole thing not-fun and strongly encourages me to do 
other things.  I remember watching Wyatt hack on the docs and 
then ran a build script that initiated some kind of 
pull/clone/whatever-I-forget-exactly from the main repo (yuck).  
It seems like most of the meaty bits are there, but it all needs 
to get adjusted according to the experiences of (potential) 
contributors.

The github editing interface helps, but is only really effective 
for very small changes that I know will work.  It requires 
generating a pull request before I see what the published result 
will look like.  I really need to be able to see doc changes 
/easily/.

I've always been attended to quickly during the few pull requests 
I made, though there seem to be some important ones (from other 
people) that slip through the cracks.  I find out about those 
later when I read the newsgroup.  I just hope that Walter & Co 
will notice this happening and know what to do about it.

FWIW, I was able to pick up and understand ddoc very quickly.  It 
is awesome for docs (you know, that thing it was made for).  I 
also love the idea of generating webpages from my source code: as 
long as it's API docs.  I don't think this necessarily means it 
should be used for web dev.  At the same time, when web 
developers offer alternative tools, my gag reflexes tend to kick 
in.  Maybe we can solicit the web developers for tool advice and 
pick the things that don't make people gag?  Maybe my imagination 
lives in a perfect world.

I hope this is constructive enough.
(In reality I probably just pissed off a bunch of 
dynamically-typed-language-loving scripty web programmers.  Oh 
crap! *ducks*)
</rambling>


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