Cool Stuff for D that we keep Secret

[Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d]

On 7/9/14, 12:21 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> Vladimir's talk on Dustmite is now up on Reddit. We ship Dustmite as
> part of the dmd distribution.
>
> But it's a secret.
>
> Just try to find out anything or any mention of Dustmite on dlang.org.
>
> The idea "Build It, and They Will Come" is a stupid hollywood myth. We
> cannot go on with creating fantastic, revolutionary tools and then keep
> them a secret.
>
> Dustmite is just one example of this, but it's on top of my head because
> I went looking for a link to it to go with the Reddit pointer to the
> video. It fits in quite nicely with my previous antics at discovering
> there were no links to gdc or ldc instructions, and no mention anywhere
> that to get gdc on Ubuntu, one only needs to type:
>
>     sudo apt-get install gdc
>
> All you guys building stuff - it's all WASTED EFFORT if you don't make
> it findable by users. /rant

This post underlines a few of my frustrations as well, which I'll share 
with the intent of producing a positive effect.

There are a few things each and any of us can do, starting with the 
simplest and utmost trivial, to help D succeed (which is I assume the 
shared goal of all of our regular participants).

* Shed the provincialism. The implied provincialism in this forum - 
which is but a microcosm - is staggering. There's a good fight of ideas 
and thousands of hours cumulatively spent on writing posts, often with 
great technical content. There seems to be no understanding that 
statistically nobody in the larger community lurks here; nobody peruses 
the forum to get the pulse of language development; nobody comes here to 
read technical pieces about D. The forum activity should be planning 
followed by "going out" and doing things.

The simplest thing do for each and every member of this community is to 
have accounts on all social news sites (twitter, facebook, reddit, 
hackernews) and discuss _there_ things instead of replying to 
announcements internally. I recall some of us haven't even brought 
themselves to check digitalmars.D.announce although they are active on 
digitalmars.D - this is crazy!

It has often been the case that Walter and I (again!) hold the fort on 
public discussions on D, while most of the others discuss the same 
topics on the forums.

* Get on pull requests. I can't say this much enough. If you wrote some, 
ping about it. If you see some you care about, review it even if you 
don't have rights yet. A simple message such as "I reviewed this and 
LGTM, any holdup?" would be sufficient to attract attention.

If you feel experienced enough, ask to be included as a committer. (I 
plan to lower the bar on committer acceptance; with git it's easy to 
undo mistakes and we should exercise due process on firing, not 
accepting, committers.)

* Steal work. Whenever there's something obviously good to be done, 
don't expect Walter or me to do it. Don't suggest. Don't dispense advice 
(especially of the management drone kind - seriously, STFU). Just do it. 
There's just a FRACKTON of simple and obviously good work to be done 
here. Get on it.


Andrei