On Thursday, 2 June 2016 at 20:34:24 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu
wrote:
Interestingly it came as encouraging and empowering some
fledgling work that had compelling things going for it
(including but not limited to enthusiastic receipt in this
forum), which ironically is exactly what you just asked for.
Yes, indeed, it was a good first (and second) step. But further
steps are necessary too in order to finish a project.
Here's what would have been ideal to me:
1) Someone writes a cool thing.
2) We encourage further exploration and see interest.
3) After deciding there's serious potential, we decide on the end
goal, a timeframe, and set the conditions of success. For
example: ddox becomes the official documentation generator at the
end of the year if there are no major bugs remaining open.
4) We put it on the website and work toward the goal, with all
the teams - Phobos, dlang.org, RejectedSoftware, etc.,
understanding their role.
5) When the goal deadline arrives, if it passes the major bug
test, it goes live and we are committed to it going forward.
Why this order? First, someone writing the cool thing means we
actually have something to sink our teeth into and a de facto
champion in the original author.
Second, we need to incubate this work and not discourage the
author.
ddox got a decent go up to here.
But then we need to decide what's next - a clear goal, including
a due date, gets us all aligned and removes a lot of the
uncertainty on the author's side; it is some reassurance that
they aren't wasting their time, and encourages outside teams to
get onboard.
That leads directly into step four, and then step five actually
proves that the others were not in vain.
