The process described in the linked article could be a good thing for D

[max haughton]

On Wednesday, 25 May 2022 at 03:16:05 UTC, forkit wrote:
> On Wednesday, 25 May 2022 at 00:15:56 UTC, max haughton wrote:
>>
>>
>> If we take Boyd's OODA loop as an abstraction to target ....
>> ...
>
> Boyd's loop is targetted towards decision makers (i.e. 
> management) - ie. humans.

D contributors are indeed human

> If you're saying D does not have the humans to put into 
> management positions, then D does not have the humans to make 
> decisions, and thus, pursuing Boyd's loop (or any other form of 
> managing).. is kinda pointless ;-)

I'm saying we have enough humans to do stuff we are just not good 
at keep them pointing at the right stuff, for reasons similar to 
those described in the linked article.

In a project like D naively aiming to manage people will just 
piss people off, we need to make progress observable and make it 
obvious where actually needs work and what other people are 
trying to do. Being able to measure some notion of progress, even 
if fuzzy, is good way of getting more of that thing: In a very 
simple sense, which types of D outreach bring the most traffic to 
dlang.org? How many people have downloaded the nightly build on 
github etc. (hint: not many).

Managing programmers is a full time job even if you're paying 
them to work for you. I think a lot of these nicely packaged 
ideas like OODA are bullshit, I just think there is obviously 
progress we can make either for individuals or for D as a 
directed programming language in the rough concept of the loop. 
The specifics don't really matter.

This concept has an added benefit in allowing people new to 
contributing to find something to do without having to actively 
seek out people they may not know exist yet. Similarly we have no 
data on whether people try and fail to contribute, get stuck, 
etc: sticking a little survey somewhere is better than nothing.