Today the Hobbyist, Tommorow, The World!

[Kyle Furlong]

I'm becoming more and more convinced that D needs a polished presence. 
How did Java succeed? Marketing. Plain and simple, the first revisions 
sucked, but got evangelized extremely effectively. How much better, 
since we have a quality compiler, to market it.

I think I understand the attitude of Walter and some others. That is, 
that the merits of the language are self evident to the people who it is 
written for, e.g. those who seek will find. So from this point of view, 
marketing is unnecessary, word of mouth about the merits of the language 
will do this work for us.

While I appreciate this feeling, this mode of operation will only gain 
us a certain base of users, i.e. hobbyists and one man operations who 
can afford to invest in a new language on just its merits. Everyone else 
(read, the majority of the IT world) cannot form decisions only on the 
merits of a compiler. Organizations need reassurances of a polished 
presence. This means documentation, support, packaging, and marketing.

To this end, I propose the formation of an organization/committee, 
headed by Walter, to guide the process of creating this polished presence.

Some things which this committee should consider are:

1. Unified std library which is 100% covered and stable.

Aside: I am strongly biased to creating this library out of Ares + 
Mango. No offense Walter, but Sean and Kris' code is higher quality at 
this point.

2. Formation of a GUI /team/ to pick and/or develop further a cross 
platform solution.

Aside: It must be a team. DWT is stagnant because Shawn doesnt have 
time, and no one else understands the code well enough to continue.

3. Choice of a new mascot/revamp of D-man. Also consider a new name.

Aside: I love the name D. But, the benefits of a name bigger than 2 
letters are self evident, it should be considered. Also, D-man has 
served us well. My initial reaction however, when I was first introduced 
to him, was, "Wow, what a trashy mascot, how uncreative." Now that I'm 
used to him, hes alright, but I seriously think we need to reconsider.

4. A new/revampped web presence. The combination of 
www.digitalmars.com/d/ and www.dsource.org has worked well for us from 
the standpoint of functionality. However, I think to further the goals 
of a polished presence, we need a presence more along the lines of 
www.php.net.

Aside: I understand that Walter would like as much traffic to drive his 
click ads, but we could work something out, if it is a big issue. Also, 
this site could also be owned by DigitalMars as well.

I'm interested to hear dissenting opinions as well as Walter's plans for 
DigitalMars' involvement in the pursuit of D's success in the wider 
world of computing.

-- 
Kyle Furlong // Physics Undergrad, UCSB

"D is going wherever the D community wants it to go." - Walter Bright