Re: A New Era for the D Community
On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 23:24:53 UTC, Walter Bright wrote: This initiative has my full support. While I have ceased using D because of my concerns about the project's future (I discussed my reasons in a previous message that don't need to be repeated), I have continued to check this forum occasionally, hoping to see the slope turn positive. Mike's message and your response are both the kind of thing I was hoping for. While there is no guarantee that the effort Mike describes will have the desired outcome, the mere fact that the effort has been made and endorsed by you is a significant positive step. I'm sure I needn't tell you that technical work and project management require related but different talents. I did both professionally for a very long time and I certainly was not equally good at both. You can probably guess which one was the laggard. But I have seen it done well, having worked for some really great managers. One who deserves mention is the late Frank Heart. The ARPANet (and thus the Internet) would not have existed without Frank's unique ability to herd the brilliant cats at BBN 50+ years ago. He's in the Internet Hall of Fame, deservedly. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Heart. Some of the great people in the history of computer science are in the picture on that page, including Bob Kahn, who, with Vint Cerf, won the Turing Award. Both played absolutely key roles in the development of the Internet. I really hope that this is the start of something good for this project. A lot of value has been built here, but the project has obviously foundered in an organizational way. Project management is difficult, so the trouble is not surprising or unique. The key is recognizing that the problems are happening and taking steps that have a reasonable probability of improving the situation. I will watch how this unfolds with great interest. /Don Allen
Re: A New Era for the D Community
On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 23:42:37 UTC, max haughton wrote: On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 23:17:28 UTC, MissPiggy wrote: On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 11:13:34 UTC, Mike Parker wrote: Our enthusiasm is high, and we're ready to get going. I think you'll like where we're headed. IVY may increase the probability of a particular outcome, but it cannot predict a particular outcome. OK? You simply cannot ever know the position and velocity of every atom in the universe. Luckily some very clever physicists have worked out that this task is a fools errand and instead one *can* model the interesting large scale dynamics of the system extremely well (until you can't, but still). You're going to hear more about IVY as time goes by, and eventually, we're going to start employing it more broadly in the community. Whether you can in fact 'deploy' IVY into the 'broader community'... well..that remains to be seen. It's more likely, I think, that D's 'future' will be increasingly determined by the priorities of a select group of corporations, rather than any psychological/behavioural science. Ignoring that this statement doesn't make any sense (IVY is but a tool): Let's not bother then eh — I'm sure Mike, who is the main liaison between these groups, hasn't put any thought into this. I don't believe my post required this kind of response. Check your motivations please. First, I was simply stating the obvious.. that there are always things that are not under your control. You can predict possibilities of an outcome only (where such variables are in play). This is not the same as saying you shouldn't try, which was your criticism against something I never said. Second, I was simply stating the obvious (e.g who attends these regular meetings? Increasingly, its business oriented, isn't it? That is not a criticism. Other languages have also been driven by business priorities, and have succeeded very well. Whether this is true for D, remains to be seen. When I go on a road trip, even when I know where I want to get to, doesn't mean I'm going to get there. It also doesn't mean I'm not going to go on a road trip.
Re: A New Era for the D Community
On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 23:17:28 UTC, MissPiggy wrote: On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 11:13:34 UTC, Mike Parker wrote: Our enthusiasm is high, and we're ready to get going. I think you'll like where we're headed. IVY may increase the probability of a particular outcome, but it cannot predict a particular outcome. OK? You simply cannot ever know the position and velocity of every atom in the universe. Luckily some very clever physicists have worked out that this task is a fools errand and instead one *can* model the interesting large scale dynamics of the system extremely well (until you can't, but still). You're going to hear more about IVY as time goes by, and eventually, we're going to start employing it more broadly in the community. Whether you can in fact 'deploy' IVY into the 'broader community'... well..that remains to be seen. It's more likely, I think, that D's 'future' will be increasingly determined by the priorities of a select group of corporations, rather than any psychological/behavioural science. Ignoring that this statement doesn't make any sense (IVY is but a tool): Let's not bother then eh — I'm sure Mike, who is the main liaison between these groups, hasn't put any thought into this.
Re: A New Era for the D Community
This initiative has my full support.
Re: A New Era for the D Community
On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 11:13:34 UTC, Mike Parker wrote: Our enthusiasm is high, and we're ready to get going. I think you'll like where we're headed. IVY may increase the probability of a particular outcome, but it cannot predict a particular outcome. We still can't even predict weather forecasts all that well either. You simply cannot ever know the position and velocity of every atom in the universe. You're going to hear more about IVY as time goes by, and eventually, we're going to start employing it more broadly in the community. Whether you can in fact 'deploy' IVY into the 'broader community'... well..that remains to be seen. It's more likely, I think, that D's 'future' will be increasingly determined by the priorities of a select group of corporations, rather than any psychological/behavioural science.
Re: A New Era for the D Community
On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 11:13:34 UTC, Mike Parker wrote: ... Exciting news!
Re: A New Era for the D Community
On 5/3/23 7:13 AM, Mike Parker wrote: Our enthusiasm is high, and we're ready to get going. I think you'll like where we're headed. This all sounds awesome! -Steve
Re: A New Era for the D Community
On 5/3/23 05:08, Mike Parker wrote: On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 11:37:31 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote: From memory that was merely an AGM at DConf, but sure, I'll take credit for that (despite knowing next to nothing about management)! The AGM was your idea, but so were the regular meetings. You pushed it to Ali in 2018. I have a second-hand email record! Wow! I wouldn't have remembered but it's an email I wrote on November 3, 2018, which starts with "Nicholas Wilson visited the Bay Area for an LLVM conference and I had a couple of chances to see him." Good old days! :) Ali
Re: A New Era for the D Community
On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 11:37:31 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote: From memory that was merely an AGM at DConf, but sure, I'll take credit for that (despite knowing next to nothing about management)! The AGM was your idea, but so were the regular meetings. You pushed it to Ali in 2018. I have a second-hand email record!
Re: A New Era for the D Community
On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 11:13:34 UTC, Mike Parker wrote: Yes, there have been improvements over the past few years. The quarterly DLF meetings with industry representatives, initially proposed by Nicholas Wilson, have been productive. From memory that was merely an AGM at DConf, but sure, I'll take credit for that (despite knowing next to nothing about management)!
Re: A New Era for the D Community
Very interesting. I just want to say, I'm having repeated unrelated CI failures for: https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pull/8699 Yesterday I finally said right stuff this I don't have the energy to fight the CI on this anymore and asked Razvan to kinda take over as the changes on my end are fundamentally done. This may not seem very important, but to Symmetry, without Razvan I'd honestly just close that PR and leave 500ms reduction in compile times when you import std.regex on the table. Having this extra support in the community who can tackle this sort of issues is both highly appreciated and highly motivational for unblocking people in the future. Much appreciation all round, long may it continue!
Re: A New Era for the D Community
Sounds awesome Mike, really does. As long as transparency remains a key objective, I think everyone is on board.
A New Era for the D Community
At DConf '22, Roberto Ierusalimschy, the lead designer of [the Lua programming language](https://www.lua.org/), was [our guest keynote speaker](https://youtu.be/H3inzGGFefg). At the end of his talk, Robert Schadek [asked him how he organized the Lua community](https://youtu.be/H3inzGGFefg?t=3223). His answer: Is it too ugly if I say I don't? In [my talk at the same conference](https://youtu.be/gk_QjjxCGSY), I highlighted part of the history of the D community's evolution. I used the metaphor of a pioneer settlement that evolved into a village and then into a town. In those early pioneering days, Walter's approach to organizing the community was the same as Roberto's. He didn't need to do anything. The community organized itself and built from scratch the foundations of the ecosystem we have today. If you discovered D and expected only to be a user and never a contributor, then D just wasn't for you. Of course, as the community grew and evolved, and built up more of the ecosystem, there was increasing space for noncontributors. That, in turn, led to shifting expectations. At different points in D's history, Walter, Andrei, and motivated community members took steps to adapt to changing expectations. For several years they were able to keep up reasonably well. To give just one example, in the earliest days, users posted bug reports in the forums or by emailing Walter, and contributors emailed him patches. In response to calls for better bug management, a community member volunteered to maintain a Bugzilla instance. Then later, when people were wondering why they had to submit patches to Bugzilla when GitHub existed, Walter was persuaded to put the compiler's source on GitHub. By the time Walter and Andrei established the D Language Foundation in 2015, they had settled into a very loose management style. Motivated community members volunteered to create services, or take charge of something in the ecosystem, and Walter and Andrei would give their blessing. I can't speak to what their goals were with the Foundation, but they largely continued that approach to managing the ecosystem. Unfortunately, as the community continued to grow and expectations continued to evolve, that approach was unsustainable. Ten years ago, if the forums went down, everyone knew to contact Vladimir Panteleev. Today, many people don't know, and probably don't care, that he pays for and maintains the server on which the forums are hosted. The forums are on dlang.org, the official website of the D Language Foundation, so the DLF is responsible for getting things back up. When a bug report remains open for years, it doesn't matter that it's because it hasn't come to the attention of someone with the time, ability, and motivation to fix it. The DLF is responsible for organizing resources to address reported issues, and if we can't, that's on us. One of the biggest complaints I've heard over the past few years is some form of "lack of leadership/management/vision". It's painful to hear, as I know that everyone involved with the DLF is personally invested. We're here because we love what we're doing. Yet, the criticism is on the mark. Yes, there have been improvements over the past few years. The quarterly DLF meetings with industry representatives, initially proposed by Nicholas Wilson, have been productive. The monthly meetings that grew out of those have led to several positive changes. Symmetry's sponsorship of the Pull Request and Issue Manager positions held by Razvan Nitu and Dennis Korpel has been a huge boon. We've begun migrating some ecosystem services to DLF servers (it's going very slowly, but it's happening). We've done several good things that I could enumerate here. But collectively, it's the equivalent of being surrounded by small fires and running around to put them out at random. We simply do not have a structured system of management. Several times over the past couple of years, we discussed what to do about it. We read books, watched presentations, and asked for advice. We got nowhere. Then, in July of last year, Paul Toth of Ucora reached out with an offer. Had I known at the time that it was going to change everything, I would have put it at the top of my priority list. Alas, it wasn't until November that things started moving. Ucora’s long-term vision is [to change the way the world works](https://ucora.com/). As part of their mission, they provide organizations with the tools they need to transform the way they work. [IVY, their organizational development program](https://ucora.com/solutions/organizational-development/), is a simple but innovative approach to workflow. Ucora has been using D for several years. They're invested in D's success, and so they want the DLF to be successful. Paul offered to put the DLF team through the IVY program at no charge. We accepted, and every Friday for the past 14 weeks we've been having sessions
