On Thursday, 19 October 2017 at 16:43:51 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 11:43:11AM +0000, jmh530 via
Digitalmars-d wrote: [...]
In some sense, though, you can pick your battles. The longer
you've been reading the forums, the better you may have a
sense of it. When I first started reading them, I was gung-ho
and excited about some debates, but now I'm just like meh. And
I'm not even sure I've been on here two years. Find something
you can contribute to, or start a new project, and work on
that.
+1. I used to actively participate in forum debates.
Nowadays, meh. At the end of the day, what matters is whether
somebody picks up the baton and actually starts contributing.
So that's what I do these days. See something I don't like in
Phobos? Fix it, submit a PR. See a typo on the website? Fix
it, submit a PR. See something I don't know how to fix? Dig
into the code, learn how to do it. Maybe I'll discover I'm in
way over my head. That's OK, I still learn something along the
way. Maybe next time I'll be knowledgeable enough to submit a
PR.
Participating in a forum debate is the easiest thing to do, but
also the least productive, all things considered. I can win
arguments, or lose arguments, but after all that is said and
done, what has changed in the codebase? Nothing. And what are
the chances of somebody else picking up the torch and carrying
it through? Judging from our track record, practically nil.
What does makes a change is when somebody writes the code. (And
by "code" here I include also things like HTML/CSS for the
website.) A forum proposal, say a website change, would have
so much more weight if the person making the proposal has a PR
sitting in the queue that people can decide whether or not to
merge. It sends the message that (1) the person cares enough
about the issue to actually invest the time and energy to
implement it (not just talk about it), and (2) the person is
personally committed to make it happen and see it through.
Also, (3) should the consensus turn out to be "yes let's do
it", it can be implemented right away, instead of a vacuous
"OK, we finally agreed to do this. So who's gonna actually
write the code? Hmm? ... Nobody? Oh well, I guess nobody cares
enough to actually do it. Too bad."
T
If something is wrong on your local D installation (library bug
etc) and you fix it, you benefit from it, so the work is useful
even if the change is refused on the public codebase, so no
problem with that.
Changing a website without the owner content is automatically a
waste of time.
Especially in this case. I don't need or use it locally, and in
this particular case, what I suggest is the complete opposite of
the current marketing strategy, and I've already been told that
this won't happen in any foreseeing future.
So I'll follow this smart advice that I've been given, and pick
another battle.
