My first experience as a D Newbie

[H. S. Teoh]

On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 11:43:11AM +0000, jmh530 via Digitalmars-d wrote:
[...]
> In some sense, though, you can pick your battles. The longer you've
> been reading the forums, the better you may have a sense of it. When I
> first started reading them, I was gung-ho and excited about some
> debates, but now I'm just like meh. And I'm not even sure I've been on
> here two years. Find something you can contribute to, or start a new
> project, and work on that.

+1.  I used to actively participate in forum debates.  Nowadays, meh.
At the end of the day, what matters is whether somebody picks up the
baton and actually starts contributing.  So that's what I do these days.
See something I don't like in Phobos?  Fix it, submit a PR.  See a typo
on the website?  Fix it, submit a PR.  See something I don't know how to
fix?  Dig into the code, learn how to do it.  Maybe I'll discover I'm in
way over my head.  That's OK, I still learn something along the way.
Maybe next time I'll be knowledgeable enough to submit a PR.

Participating in a forum debate is the easiest thing to do, but also the
least productive, all things considered.  I can win arguments, or lose
arguments, but after all that is said and done, what has changed in the
codebase?  Nothing.  And what are the chances of somebody else picking
up the torch and carrying it through?  Judging from our track record,
practically nil.

What does makes a change is when somebody writes the code. (And by
"code" here I include also things like HTML/CSS for the website.)  A
forum proposal, say a website change, would have so much more weight if
the person making the proposal has a PR sitting in the queue that people
can decide whether or not to merge.  It sends the message that (1) the
person cares enough about the issue to actually invest the time and
energy to implement it (not just talk about it), and (2) the person is
personally committed to make it happen and see it through.  Also, (3)
should the consensus turn out to be "yes let's do it", it can be
implemented right away, instead of a vacuous "OK, we finally agreed to
do this.  So who's gonna actually write the code? Hmm? ... Nobody? Oh
well, I guess nobody cares enough to actually do it. Too bad."


T

-- 
Gone Chopin. Bach in a minuet.