Lost a new commercial user this week :(

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 20 December 2014 at 17:13:04 UTC, Martin Nowak wrote:
> On 12/17/2014 09:45 AM, Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> Well... when? I've been here 6 years. When can I start to use 
>> D for my work?
>> Other languages seem to have a higher velocity. Are we 
>> fighting a losing battle?
>
> Other languages do much less than D which is a full-blown C++ 
> replacement.
> We've made huge progress in the past few years, look at the 
> number of bugfixes and enhancements 
> http://dlang.org/changelog.html and we introduced or finished 
> several language features, that make D even more powerful (e.g. 
> UFCS, UDA, alias this...). Still only very few people actually 
> work on the compiler and we're also pretty bad in coordinating 
> contributions.

One move that might work is providing help to those who want to 
get started on compiler hacking, by letting them know who those 
knowledgeable about dmd are and providing a venue for them to ask 
questions when getting started, ie some sort of mentoring into 
dmd hacking.  It's a bit alarming how few people dominate dmd 
development, especially compared to phobos:

https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/graphs/contributors

The dmd project needs to do a better job of growing more 
contributors, this is one good way to do it.  The alternative is 
to just let people jump in and sink or swim on their own, which 
might be a good filter to weed out the truly committed and 
capable from the rest, but also risks losing those who are 
capable but need some initial guidance.

For example, there could be a note on the README that says you 
should contact Kenji, Walter, Dan, or Martin if you need some 
help getting started with contributing to dmd, along with contact 
info (I assume Don and Brad might not be as interested).  You may 
say that all those people are reachable now, but without explicit 
permission like that, some people get intimidated about bothering 
someone like Walter.

Another suggestion is to actually write some docs for dmd, 
perhaps starting with frontend source layout and organization, 
similar to the brief list for the backend:

https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/blob/master/src/backend/backend.txt

Of course, writing docs is always a tall order, but if it leads 
to more contributors, it can pay off in spades.