The birth of Åkerön
Tyro[17]
ridimz at yahoo.com
Tue Jun 18 18:47:37 PDT 2013
On 6/18/13 6:09 PM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I understand that Andrew Edwards declined to have his talk recorded, and the
> slides have not been uploaded either. So, what was it actually about? The
> abstract is ... not exactly informative. :-P
>
> Thanks & best wishes,
>
> -- Joe
>
I decided not to record my talk which, in hindsight may not have been my
best decision. That shouldn't have prevented the release of the slides
but after reviewing the slides I came to the conclusion that the message
was lost without the actual talk so I also decided against releasing them.
Steven did a great job explaining the gist of the talk (thanks) but I'll
expand a little:
I've been in the military and D Programming communities for quite some
time and during the presentation I tried to convey to the audience the
situations that lead to me joining both; basically frustration that led
to as search for better. When I stumbled across D I was just cutting my
teeth on source code and in many ways I still am. While I have a grasp
of the basics, I am at a lost when it comes to stringing them together
to develop a system of any kind. Most of what I know I've learned
lurking around the D forums and trying to read D out of Java and C++
programming books. Since I've resisted actually trying to learn those
languages however, I haven't learned too much.
Though I cannot program, I have tried to support the community in every
way I possibly can. Spreading the word was something simple so I tried
to do that whenever and wherever I got the opportunity. I attempted to
talk to a number of authors to have them look into the language and
write books about it but got very few. Those that I did receive were not
very positive. With the exception of two authors who, while they could
not assist, began to make mention of the language in their newsletters
and articles: one even went on to teach one of his courses using D (a
big thank you to Chuck Allison who continues to be a fervent supporter
of the language even today).
There are a couple observations that have remained constant over the
past eleven years I've been lurking here in D land: 1) The documentation
is seriously lacking 2) There are few tutorials (and those that exist
suffer from code rot) 3) The language continues to evolve so people are
unwilling to develop tools for it 4) Most projects that get started are
quickly abandoned 5) People outside the community do not give it a fare
shake 6) There is no IDE 7) No built in GUI library 8) Most people
complain about what's not available instead of lending a hand to fix it.
One would think that after eleven years, I would have mastered the
language by now. Not so because my day job doesn't allow for it. I start
early in the days (up by 4AM) and end late at night (depart work about
9PM) so the little time is get to pursue programming is next to
nonexistent and very precious. Needless to say, when I do find that
time, I would like to pick up a book written about programming in D
rather than trying to translate, in my head, books written for other
languages to D. No books? Maybe some tutorials would help... wait, they
don't exist either.
I'm not going to be like the people that fall under category 8. To me
it's one of two simple choices, either I contribute or shut up. At this
point though, I am tired of just shutting up and waiting for the
condition to change. Since I'm about to transition to civilian life,
what would be better than trying to help ensure the future of something
I care deeply about? I took a look at the list and decided that there
were only to places I can help out: I could help create tutorials (in a
severely limited capacity) and continue spreading the word about the
benefits of switching to D.
I have no problem with spreading the word and, in fact, have been doing
it since I stumbled upon the language. But I want to do more. I want to
code and actually help improve the language. In order for that to happen
though I need situations 1 or 2 to be improved. So I decided to launch
dtutor.org.
But the decision was the easy part. I won't be finished with my current
job until summer 2014 so I have very little time. I have very little
programming experience, and thus would be at a lost to try to prepare
content by myself. Though I've assembled, repaired and trouble shot
computers issues for 20+ years, I've never ran a server before so that
presents a challenge in itself. The technology I've decided to use to
build the site is written in Python (of which I know nothing) which
presents quite an obstacle to get it ported to D. I've never design or
participate in the design of a website before so will have to learn that.
Yeah, its pretty clear that I have bitten off a lot more than I can
chew... but to me it is better than complaining about the situation and
not doing anything to help. The rest of the talk was about other areas
of interest I have including Natural Language Processing and Logistics
Management Systems. In the big scheme of things they are significant for
my future business goals but not so much for D. Though I do hope to be
the proud employer of D programmers in the future.
My hope is that I can obtain some help in bringing dtutor.org to life so
that people like me can have a resource to turn to when they need
guidance and the nay-Sayers will have one less thing to talk about.
--
Andrew Edwards
--------------------
http://www.akeron.co
auto getAddress() {
string location = "@", period = ".";
return ("info" ~ location ~ "afidem" ~ period ~ "org");
}
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