Why Phobos is cool

[Chris]

On Saturday, 27 June 2020 at 09:44:01 UTC, aberba wrote:
> On Friday, 26 June 2020 at 16:21:17 UTC, Paul Backus wrote:
>> On Friday, 26 June 2020 at 15:06:03 UTC, Chris wrote:
>>>
>>> Once you are a leader you have to stop developing and start 
>>> coordinating things. If you try to do both you'll fail. I 
>>> said this years ago. You love PLs and programming too much to 
>>> be a leader, you want to write good code (so does Walter). 
>>> You should never have become a leader in the first place. 
>>> You'd need someone like Steve Jobs who has a vision and the 
>>> energy to push his cause.
>>
>> This raises the question: where can D community to find such a 
>> person?
>>
>> There is an opportunity for someone with strong communication 
>> and organizational skills to do a great service for the D 
>> community by stepping up and filling this leadership vacuum. 
>> So far, no one has done so. Perhaps this is because we do not 
>> have a "Steve Jobs" in our midst--or perhaps we do, and they 
>> simply lack confidence that their contribution would be valued 
>> and rewarded.
>>
>> It is worth thinking about what might be done to encourage 
>> such a person to volunteer, and what obstacles might currently 
>> be standing in their way.
>
>
> It can be done. The problem is the mindset that those things 
> are not important or people complaining about such stuff are 
> unproductive idiots who have nothing to do with their life but 
> spend all day (...in their mind) spamming the D forum, so to 
> speak.
>
> We all get paid for writing code. But there's a tool maker and 
> there's a tool user. A tool user can also be another person's 
> tool user.
>
> Again its the mindset, not everyone has that level of polish 
> and UX mind/priority. Some have never written user facing code 
> where it has to be done is such a way regular people (in D's 
> case the tool user) can feel comfortable to pick up.
>
> It all depends on the mindset, I don't believe it has to do 
> with being a (hard core) programmer or anything like it. I've 
> seen D tools well polished with good UX. Some value 
> communication and organizational skills naturally. The basic 
> elements you learn in some high schools or in entrepreneurship 
> class needed to make ventures succeed and grow, in addition to 
> other agents.
>
> In D's case, its hard to tell. Some think money is the only way 
> to attract talents and they'll only pick that from the Steve 
> jobs analogy.
>
> At the end of the day, its all about trying to make D better.

Well put. I think what's missing is a general vision. There are 
too many "subthreads" going on. Everybody has their pet features 
or need just one specific thing out of D an that's that (I 
suppose some users / companies are happy with a subset of D and 
don't care about the rest that might be important to others). The 
problem is that the "leaders" should not actively develop as this 
narrows the field of vision, and if a company sponsors D but only 
focuses on the one aspect that is important to them, then it 
cannot really be a "general purpose" language.

What you basically need is someone like Steve Jobs 
(metaphorically speaking) who sees the bigger picture and says 
"cut that crap" when necessary.