Opportunities for D

[Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d]

On 7/10/14, 5:54 AM, Dicebot wrote:
> On Thursday, 10 July 2014 at 12:13:03 UTC, bearophile wrote:
>> Dicebot:
>>
>>> I can't blame Sonke or anyone else for not wanting to waste his time
>>> on pushing more stuff upstream considering how miserable contribution
>>> experience is right now.
>>
>> This was one of the causes of the creation of Tango and its fiasco, so
>> better to not repeat that.
>>
>> Bye,
>> bearophile
>
> No one but Walter / Andrei can do anything about it. Right now we are in
> weird situation when they call for "lieutenants" but are not ready to
> abandon decision power.

In the military (where the metaphor has been drawn for) there are 
lieutenants and there's no abandonment of decision power. Of course I 
wouldn't push the simile too much.

> It can't possibly work that way. No amount of
> volunteer effort will help when so many PR stall waiting for resolution
> comment from one of language "generals".

I'll make a pass, but on the face of it I disagree.

There's just lots and lots and lots of obviously good things that just 
don't get done until Walter or I do them. Last example I remember is 
video links for the DConf 2014 talks on dconf.org. The SMALLEST and 
OBVIOUSLY GOOD THING anyone could imagine. Someone on reddit mentioned 
we should put them there. Nobody in the community did anything about it 
until I posted the pull request for day 1 (http://goo.gl/9EUXv1) and 
Walter pulled it (http://goo.gl/O22dsa).

In the meantime, everybody's busy arguing the minutia of logo redesign. 
The length (not existence) of that thread is a piece of evidence of 
what's wrong with our community.

Looking at https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pulls, I 
agree there are a few controversial pull requests that are explicitly 
waiting for me, such as 
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/1010. I'd need a 
fair amount of convincing that that's a frequent case. Looking at the 
second oldest pull request 
(https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/1138) that's just 
a documentation pull, on which I myself last asked about status on March 15.

Furthermore there are just a good amount of pull requests that have 
nothing to do with any leadership. E.g. 
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/1527 is some 
apparently work that's just sitting there abandoned.

Switching to newer pull requests, there are simple and obviously good 
pull requests that just sit there for anyone to pull. And that includes 
you, Dicebot, since a few seconds ago. Since you don't mince words when 
criticizing the leadership you may as well put your money where your 
mouth is. https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/2300 for 
example is simple, obviously good, and could be pulled in a minute by 
any of our 24, pardon, 25 core pullers who has a basic understanding of 
@trusted.

Then there's stuff I have no expertise in such as 
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/2307. Not only I'm 
not on hook for that, I better not discuss and pull that and leave it to 
someone who knows curl better.

Of course that doesn't undo the fact that Walter and I are on hook for a 
number of things. What I'm saying is I disagree with the allegation that 
"no amount of volunteer effort will help". From the looks of things, 
we're in dire need of volunteer effort.


Andrei