Proposal : aggregated dlang git repository

Laeeth Isharc via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Tue Feb 10 17:32:02 PST 2015


> It is a delicate matter. Yes, spreading over less important 
> issues is harmful for focusing on core ones. But the same time 
> having many small issues unresolved harms the contribution 
> culture as those keep annoying people over and over again.

Excellence can come in part from getting many small things right 
(or at least just a little bit better) that most people think 
don't matter.  I think Jobs was overrated compared to the 
technical people that made everything possible (and not just the 
ones at Apple), but his unreasonableness about not putting up 
with little things that irked him as a discerning judge did pay 
off for the user.  A language ecosystem is not a consumer 
product, and an open source project is not a commercial venture; 
but perhaps it's worth bearing in mind whilst also wanting to 
make sure effort is marshalled towards things with demonstrably 
high payoffs.  A difficult balance.

> In this specific case I didn't take go at this because I was 
> bored and wanted to do _something_. It was because problem with 
> lack of reliable standard layout kept appearing every time we 
> wanted to improve build tools and release automation. It was 
> because I was annoyed that I still can't test Phobos pull 
> requests on Windows machine even despite getting one - because 
> setting up a dev environment is just too different between 
> platforms.

A certain renowned language designer once said that he found that 
working on projects he found personally important tended to pay 
off in the end, even if others couldn't see it in the beginning.  
That's probably not true of everyone, but maybe Dicebot isn't 
everyone.

An economist I once knew said that entrepreneurship happens in 
the interstices of structure, because it is often hard to 
demonstrate the payoff in tangible terms...


>> Yet we do have matters that are important and urgent. We want 
>> to improve Phobos' take on memory allocation. Yet not one soul 
>> is working on RefCounted. Few know even what needs to be done 
>> of it. Why? Why are so many of us dedicating so much energy to 
>> tweaking what already works, instead of tackling real 
>> problems? Problems that e.g. - pardon my being pedantic - are 
>> in the vision document?

What needs to be done?



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