On 6/18/13 6:09 PM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
Hi all,I understand that Andrew Edwards declined to have his talk recorded, and the slides have not been uploaded either. So, what was it actually about? The abstract is ... not exactly informative. :-P Thanks & best wishes, -- Joe
I decided not to record my talk which, in hindsight may not have been my best decision. That shouldn't have prevented the release of the slides but after reviewing the slides I came to the conclusion that the message was lost without the actual talk so I also decided against releasing them.
Steven did a great job explaining the gist of the talk (thanks) but I'll expand a little:
I've been in the military and D Programming communities for quite some time and during the presentation I tried to convey to the audience the situations that lead to me joining both; basically frustration that led to as search for better. When I stumbled across D I was just cutting my teeth on source code and in many ways I still am. While I have a grasp of the basics, I am at a lost when it comes to stringing them together to develop a system of any kind. Most of what I know I've learned lurking around the D forums and trying to read D out of Java and C++ programming books. Since I've resisted actually trying to learn those languages however, I haven't learned too much.
Though I cannot program, I have tried to support the community in every way I possibly can. Spreading the word was something simple so I tried to do that whenever and wherever I got the opportunity. I attempted to talk to a number of authors to have them look into the language and write books about it but got very few. Those that I did receive were not very positive. With the exception of two authors who, while they could not assist, began to make mention of the language in their newsletters and articles: one even went on to teach one of his courses using D (a big thank you to Chuck Allison who continues to be a fervent supporter of the language even today).
There are a couple observations that have remained constant over the past eleven years I've been lurking here in D land: 1) The documentation is seriously lacking 2) There are few tutorials (and those that exist suffer from code rot) 3) The language continues to evolve so people are unwilling to develop tools for it 4) Most projects that get started are quickly abandoned 5) People outside the community do not give it a fare shake 6) There is no IDE 7) No built in GUI library 8) Most people complain about what's not available instead of lending a hand to fix it.
One would think that after eleven years, I would have mastered the language by now. Not so because my day job doesn't allow for it. I start early in the days (up by 4AM) and end late at night (depart work about 9PM) so the little time is get to pursue programming is next to nonexistent and very precious. Needless to say, when I do find that time, I would like to pick up a book written about programming in D rather than trying to translate, in my head, books written for other languages to D. No books? Maybe some tutorials would help... wait, they don't exist either.
I'm not going to be like the people that fall under category 8. To me it's one of two simple choices, either I contribute or shut up. At this point though, I am tired of just shutting up and waiting for the condition to change. Since I'm about to transition to civilian life, what would be better than trying to help ensure the future of something I care deeply about? I took a look at the list and decided that there were only to places I can help out: I could help create tutorials (in a severely limited capacity) and continue spreading the word about the benefits of switching to D.
I have no problem with spreading the word and, in fact, have been doing it since I stumbled upon the language. But I want to do more. I want to code and actually help improve the language. In order for that to happen though I need situations 1 or 2 to be improved. So I decided to launch dtutor.org.
But the decision was the easy part. I won't be finished with my current job until summer 2014 so I have very little time. I have very little programming experience, and thus would be at a lost to try to prepare content by myself. Though I've assembled, repaired and trouble shot computers issues for 20+ years, I've never ran a server before so that presents a challenge in itself. The technology I've decided to use to build the site is written in Python (of which I know nothing) which presents quite an obstacle to get it ported to D. I've never design or participate in the design of a website before so will have to learn that.
Yeah, its pretty clear that I have bitten off a lot more than I can chew... but to me it is better than complaining about the situation and not doing anything to help. The rest of the talk was about other areas of interest I have including Natural Language Processing and Logistics Management Systems. In the big scheme of things they are significant for my future business goals but not so much for D. Though I do hope to be the proud employer of D programmers in the future.
My hope is that I can obtain some help in bringing dtutor.org to life so that people like me can have a resource to turn to when they need guidance and the nay-Sayers will have one less thing to talk about.
-- Andrew Edwards -------------------- http://www.akeron.co auto getAddress() { string location = "@", period = "."; return ("info" ~ location ~ "afidem" ~ period ~ "org"); }
