www.digitalmars.com         C & C++   DMDScript  

digitalmars.D.announce - A New Era for the D Community

reply Mike Parker <aldacron gmail.com> writes:
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
with Saeed Sabeti, Ucora's Director of Organizational Development. May 5th will
be our 15th and final session.

This has been a transformative experience. In part, it's been a 
journey of self-discovery. In discovering ourselves, we've 
learned more about each other. We now have a deeper insight into 
what motivates and demotivates each of us, why we're devoting a 
chunk of our lives to D, and how that knowledge can help us in 
our work. Importantly, we've also discovered our vision for the 
DLF and learned how to view our work through the IVY Lens.

The result is that we now have the tools we need to build up that 
structured system of management that we've been missing, and a 
much clearer view of how to get there. In the coming months, 
that's precisely what we're going to focus on. We'll be having 
regular meetings outside of our monthlies to make it happen.

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. We now have a better idea of how to more effectively 
guide contributors so that they can be more efficient and stay 
motivated. Before we get to that point, we've got a lot of 
decisions to make and a lot of work to do internally to provide a 
foundation on which we can build.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that this is going to be the most 
significant change in the D community in the 20 years I've been a 
part of it. I expect we're going to encounter bumps along the 
way, but that's okay. We now have a clear vision and purpose, and 
that makes all the difference.

Those of us who participated in the IVY program are grateful to 
Ucora for presenting us with the opportunity. Not only will IVY 
help us in guiding D, but we can take what we've learned and 
apply it to other areas of our lives. They've given us a valuable 
gift.

And on a personal note, I want to thank all of the DLF associates 
who participated. Going into it, everyone was hopeful something 
good would come of it, but I think most of the group were unsure 
if it would be helpful. None of us knew what to expect. I may 
have been the only one truly excited about it, and still, I was 
concerned I was being overly optimistic. As we continued the 
sessions, it was fun to see when someone finally "got it". In the 
end, we all did.

Our enthusiasm is high, and we're ready to get going. I think 
you'll like where we're headed.
May 03 2023
next sibling parent Ikey Doherty <ikey serpentos.com> writes:
Sounds awesome Mike, really does. As long as transparency remains 
a key objective, I think everyone is on board.
May 03 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent "Richard (Rikki) Andrew Cattermole" <richard cattermole.co.nz> writes:
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!
May 03 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Nicholas Wilson <iamthewilsonator hotmail.com> writes:
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)!
May 03 2023
parent reply Mike Parker <aldacron gmail.com> writes:
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!
May 03 2023
parent =?UTF-8?Q?Ali_=c3=87ehreli?= <acehreli yahoo.com> writes:
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
May 03 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent Steven Schveighoffer <schveiguy gmail.com> writes:
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
May 03 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent Bradley Chatha <sealabjaster gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 11:13:34 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 ...


Exciting news!
May 03 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent reply MissPiggy <MissPiggy gmail.com> writes:
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.
May 03 2023
parent reply max haughton <maxhaton gmail.com> writes:
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.
May 03 2023
parent MissPiggy <MissPiggy gmail.com> writes:
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.
May 03 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
This initiative has my full support.
May 03 2023
next sibling parent Don Allen <donaldcallen gmail.com> writes:
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
May 03 2023
prev sibling parent Theo <Theo gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 23:24:53 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 This initiative has my full support.


argh!!
May 17 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent Ivan Kazmenko <gassa mail.ru> writes:
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.


Interesting.
Good luck with the endeavor!

Ivan Kazmenko.
May 04 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Ogi <ogion.art gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 11:13:34 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 …


That’s a lot of words but little actual sense. What makes you 
think that this IVY™ program is the silver bullet that D 
desperately needs? And not just yet another load of crap invented 
by some “consulting” firm as a relatively honest way of taking 
money from businesses? Because it’s sounds like one.
May 05 2023
next sibling parent Mike Parker <aldacron gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 5 May 2023 at 11:26:26 UTC, Ogi wrote:

 On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 11:13:34 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 …


 That’s a lot of words but little actual sense. What makes you 
 think that this IVY™ program is the silver bullet that D 
 desperately needs? And not just yet another load of crap 
 invented by some “consulting” firm as a relatively honest way 
 of taking money from businesses? Because it’s sounds like one.


Because we went through the program and can see how it's going to 
benefit us. It's not automatically going to make things better. 
We have to do the work. But the point is, now we know how to do 
the work, whereas before we were just throwing things at the wall 
to see what stuck.

People around here frequently complain about bad management. 
Through the IVY program we, all of us non-managers, learned an 
approach to management that makes sense to us. It's going to 
change the way we do things, and we're all confident the change 
will be for the better.

Ucora's workflow is built around IVY as well. Saeed shared with 
us some of the ways they use it so that we could better see how 
we can employ it. He's also made himself available to help us as 
we go along. They're serious about it, and so are we.

You'll hear more about it before and during DConf. After, I 
expect it will become part of the common lexicon in the D 
community.
May 05 2023
prev sibling parent reply ryuukk_ <ryuukk.dev gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 5 May 2023 at 11:26:26 UTC, Ogi wrote:

 On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 11:13:34 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 …


 That’s a lot of words but little actual sense. What makes you 
 think that this IVY™ program is the silver bullet that D 
 desperately needs? And not just yet another load of crap 
 invented by some “consulting” firm as a relatively honest way 
 of taking money from businesses? Because it’s sounds like one.


I agree with that, it sounds like consulting propaganda

D doesn't need more bureaucracy, it actually doesn't need at all, 
D needs developers who care about enhancing the language, and 
people with a vision for the future, so we can write proper stuff

- better enums

- tagged union

- pattern matching

- async

- nullable

- tuple/multiple return (deconstruction)

- allocators (don't do them as classes/interface for the love of 
god)

- implement GC as an allocator


What will IVY do about that list? other than suck up time and 
resources

Bunch of new languages coming, and the C part of D is still as
May 13 2023
next sibling parent ryuukk_ <ryuukk.dev gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 13 May 2023 at 15:58:12 UTC, ryuukk_ wrote:

 On Friday, 5 May 2023 at 11:26:26 UTC, Ogi wrote:


Or it perhaps doesn't need that list and i am wrong in my 
analysis, wich is probably the case
May 13 2023
prev sibling parent reply IchorDev <zxinsworld gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 13 May 2023 at 15:58:12 UTC, ryuukk_ wrote:

 - better enums

 - tagged union

 - pattern matching

 - async

 - nullable

 - tuple/multiple return (deconstruction)

 - allocators (don't do them as classes/interface for the love 
 of god)

 - implement GC as an allocator


This is a nice list, however I'd like to point out that not all 
of these need to be language features.
Nullable already exists in Phobos: 
https://dlang.org/library/std/typecons/nullable.html
You might say it should be a language feature, but I nullable 
value-types are a bit weird—they can be a value that *isn't a 
value*.
Pattern matching can be done in various ways, and the same to 
some extent with tuples.

Perhaps a fork of Phobos that's more community-driven would be 
good for the language?
Jul 05 2023
parent reply Andrew <andrewlalisofficial gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 5 July 2023 at 20:03:26 UTC, IchorDev wrote:

 Perhaps a fork of Phobos that's more community-driven would be 
 good for the language?


Why not just improve Phobos itself? Make PRs to add new modules 
to std.experimental, announce them here and elsewhere on the web, 
and get the community to support it.
Jul 05 2023
parent reply IchorDev <zxinsworld gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 5 July 2023 at 21:50:37 UTC, Andrew wrote:

 Why not just improve Phobos itself? Make PRs to add new modules 
 to std.experimental, announce them here and elsewhere on the 
 web, and get the community to support it.


Earlier in this thread it was pointed out that it's too arbitrary 
whether new modules will get accepted into `std.experimental` or 
not, therefore a fork that's more open to community contributions 
(whether good or bad), would be of value. As it is, some of 
Phobos is really great, some of it could do with more 
nothrow/custom allocator alternatives or a nicer API that clashes 
with itself less often, and some of it is just horrid.

P.S. Who chose this silly name "std.experimental"? It might as 
well be "std.nonstandard".
Jul 05 2023
parent Steven Schveighoffer <schveiguy gmail.com> writes:
On 7/6/23 12:16 AM, IchorDev wrote:

 On Wednesday, 5 July 2023 at 21:50:37 UTC, Andrew wrote:

 Why not just improve Phobos itself? Make PRs to add new modules to 
 std.experimental, announce them here and elsewhere on the web, and get 
 the community to support it.


 
 Earlier in this thread it was pointed out that it's too arbitrary 
 whether new modules will get accepted into `std.experimental` or not, 
 therefore a fork that's more open to community contributions (whether 
 good or bad), would be of value. As it is, some of Phobos is really 
 great, some of it could do with more nothrow/custom allocator 
 alternatives or a nicer API that clashes with itself less often, and 
 some of it is just horrid.


Yeah, we are better off going the std.sumtype route -- release on dub, 
and then incorporate into Phobos if desired.


 
 P.S. Who chose this silly name "std.experimental"? It might as well be 
 "std.nonstandard".


It's purposely unattractive. We learned from `javax` of Java. It was 
supposed to be an "experimental" package, but people complained about 
the possibility of moving things into `java` so much that they had to 
leave packages there.

So we wanted to be very clear that packages in that branch of phobos are 
unstable, and could be removed/moved at any time. Use at your own risk.

-Steve
Jul 06 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Joseph Rushton Wakeling <joseph.wakeling webdrake.net> writes:
On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 11:13:34 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 I'm not exaggerating when I say that this is going to be the 
 most significant change in the D community in the 20 years I've 
 been a part of it. I expect we're going to encounter bumps 
 along the way, but that's okay. We now have a clear vision and 
 purpose, and that makes all the difference.


This sounds very exciting -- more than any details (which I'm 
sure we'll learn over time), I'm struck by the enthusiasm and 
confidence for the future of how D will be supported.

I really look forward to learning more as things progress.  Many 
thanks to Ucora for their investment of time, insight, and 
resources.
May 05 2023
parent M.M. <matus email.cz> writes:
On Friday, 5 May 2023 at 16:58:37 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling 
wrote:

 On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 11:13:34 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 I'm not exaggerating when I say that this is going to be the 
 most significant change in the D community in the 20 years 
 I've been a part of it. ....


 This sounds very exciting -- more than any details (which I'm 
 sure we'll learn over time), I'm struck by the enthusiasm and 
 confidence for the future of how D will be supported.

 I really look forward to learning more as things progress.  
 Many thanks to Ucora for their investment of time, insight, and 
 resources.


+1
May 14 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent ikelaiah <iwan.kelaiah gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 11:13:34 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:


 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
with Saeed Sabeti, Ucora's Director of Organizational Development. May 5th will
be our 15th and final session.



Hi Mike,

Thanks for the update. This is very interesting!

-ikel
May 05 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent reply monkyyy <crazymonkyyy gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 11:13:34 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 IVY, their organizational development program


Your solution to hearing luas dev saying "I dont manage anything" 
and whatever feedback from your survey, is you got corporate 
training and now you gun-ho about management?

Was I in an extreme minority here?

https://monkyyyscience.substack.com/i/93037044/stop-pretending-d-is-a-corporate-language


 *Stop pretending D is a corporate language*





 You have a community of meta-programming-crazed iconoclasts





 Either you believe this small community has great 1000x 
 programmers or you don't and we are doomed anyway





 If Adr says "I want to make a color lib", don't stand in his 
 way give him the namespace std.community.color that can be 
 written to his style guide, to his standards, on his github, 
 and when a new version of the compiler ships a script will 
 grab a snapshot




Please redesign and relaunch `std.experimental` to have a 
completely hands-off, anarchic structure. I'm confused how you 
came to the conclusion that complaints about management mean 
there should be more management instead of a fundamentally 
different approach.


 Don't herd cats, just clean out the litter boxes.
May 06 2023
next sibling parent reply FeepingCreature <feepingcreature gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 7 May 2023 at 02:15:02 UTC, monkyyy wrote:

 On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 11:13:34 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 IVY, their organizational development program


 Your solution to hearing luas dev saying "I dont manage 
 anything" and whatever feedback from your survey, is you got 
 corporate training and now you gun-ho about management?

 Was I in an extreme minority here?

 https://monkyyyscience.substack.com/i/93037044/stop-pretending-d-is-a-corporate-language


 *Stop pretending D is a corporate language*





 You have a community of meta-programming-crazed iconoclasts





 Either you believe this small community has great 1000x 
 programmers or you don't and we are doomed anyway





 If Adr says "I want to make a color lib", don't stand in his 
 way give him the namespace std.community.color that can be 
 written to his style guide, to his standards, on his github, 
 and when a new version of the compiler ships a script will 
 grab a snapshot




 Please redesign and relaunch `std.experimental` to have a 
 completely hands-off, anarchic structure. I'm confused how you 
 came to the conclusion that complaints about management mean 
 there should be more management instead of a fundamentally 
 different approach.


 Don't herd cats, just clean out the litter boxes.






To be honest, this has always been my take as well.

I don't want to be critical here, because I have no idea what IVY 
is and what is supposed to come of this, but I have seen people 
for years saying that D has a management problem, and this has 
always seemed wrong to me. D has an effort and agreement problem, 
but that's not something you can manage in a community of 
volunteers. Management implies an ability to focus effort. 
Broadly, D doesn't have users who want to improve D, D has users 
who want to improve doing X *with D.*

Now D management can say "we want to reach style X" or "we are 
working on improvement Y"; they can do this by setting review 
standards and only merging PRs that go in the direction they want 
the project to do. But they cannot decide what work gets done - 
only accept or reject.

Isn't the point of the DIP process primarily to be able to 
forecast whether a feature will be accepted or rejected? So 
managing the work requires an inherently reactive approach.

This is why I never understood why people were saying D "needed 
better management". What work got done has always been, in this 
language, a matter of some person saying "I could do this cool 
thing" and going and doing it. This can be mismanaged, sure, and 
there's room for improvement, granted, but better management can 
still not make improvements appear where currently there are none.

(Honestly, maybe 80% of the time when I've seen "D needs better 
management", it has been code for "D management didn't like my 
proposal.")
May 09 2023
parent monkyyy <crazymonkyyy gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 9 May 2023 at 12:27:30 UTC, FeepingCreature wrote:

 To be honest, this has always been my take as well.



On Tuesday, 9 May 2023 at 15:46:12 UTC, Paul Backus wrote:

 I basically agree with this


I feel if I was understood, only people with (at least) one foot 
out the door would agree easily.

As it stands *anytime* *anyone* says "I want to help D" in the 
discord, I and several others basically go out of our way to 
dissuade that notion; *that's damning* to the long-term health of 
the language. Thats not changing on my end, Im practicing what I 
preach, minor political changes won't convince me. Can anyone 
tell me with a straight face that the last guy to say "Hi im new, 
d lacks a crypto lib in the std, is that something I could help 
with?" shouldn't have been told to avoid that like the plague?

---

Michael Malice has this concept of "Nancy Pelosi 4th favorite ice 
cream"; every night she has a pint of icecream, 90% of the time 
she picks her favorite and so on.

She hasn't eaten her 4th favorite icecream in 3 years, is she 
lying?

(nancy says she is for freedom, but when asked if she would 
legalize meth/ legalize nukes/ get rid of all taxes, *said no 
everytime*)

I think this leads to a "blunt fact" you can only have so many 
principles. Every official D codebase uses the official style 
guide, cares about the long-term vision, and who knows what other 
unstated requirements.

I believe "coherent vision" must be discarded for some part of 
the process.


 "Management" does not always mean "telling people what to do". 
 Sometimes (often!) it means removing roadblocks and bottlenecks 
 that get in the way of people doing what they already want to 
 do.


The way I read the main post is not "We are changing our 
fundamental values to be more flexible" it's more "I'm making an 
effort to communicate the team's vision better". I don't believe 
this issue is that; I hear the team's vision very very loudly, I 
could tell you a few reasons why the std won't get new data 
structures this decade(much less the ones I would suggest). It's 
not a lack of communication of them to me, Im just willing to 
summarize "we can't make data structures, you should use  nogc 
 live and  safe, your code isn't our style, allocators are 
coming" to "no".

D seems to plan on telling people what's acceptable at exactly 
the same rate, for the foreseeable future; I see nothing that 
would make anything I write acceptable to it.


 (Honestly, maybe 80% of the time when I've seen "D needs better 
 management", it has been code for "D management didn't like my 
 proposal.")


Yes, d needs better management because d didn't like my proposal.

I mean "anarchic" when I ask for a redesign of std.experimental. 
I don't see a future healthy growth of the language when any 
member of the dev team has a say on everything.

I see no shuffling of decision-making capabilities that would 
resolve the issues.

---

When I say "d has a community of meta-programming crazed 
iconoclasts" and "don't herd cats"; I do mean the community, 
genius doesn't necessarily play nice with others or lead people 
to work *for free* with poor working conditions. I'm not really 
saying nice things about myself or the other people who left or 
are unwilling to contribute for whatever reason. But I would 
suggest the solution to courting the iconoclastic elements isn't 
with something tested in corporate culture, corporations 
generally pay to have people tolerate their demands, D must 
compete with the freedom of doing your own project.
May 12 2023
prev sibling parent Paul Backus <snarwin gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 7 May 2023 at 02:15:02 UTC, monkyyy wrote:

 On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 11:13:34 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 IVY, their organizational development program


 Your solution to hearing luas dev saying "I dont manage 
 anything" and whatever feedback from your survey, is you got 
 corporate training and now you gun-ho about management?

 Was I in an extreme minority here?

 https://monkyyyscience.substack.com/i/93037044/stop-pretending-d-is-a-corporate-language
 [...]

 Don't herd cats, just clean out the litter boxes.






I basically agree with this--but IMO there are a lot of litter 
boxes that could use cleaning out, and I'm hopeful that this new 
approach will help D's leadership do so more effectively.

"Management" does not always mean "telling people what to do". 
Sometimes (often!) it means removing roadblocks and bottlenecks 
that get in the way of people doing what they already *want* to 
do.
May 09 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent Dejan Lekic <dejan.lekic gmail.com> writes:
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.


Good job guys!! This reinforces my belief in what you do.
May 26 2023
prev sibling parent reply Francesco Mecca <dlang francescomecca.eu> writes:
On Wednesday, 3 May 2023 at 11:13:34 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 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. We now have a better idea of how to more 
 effectively guide contributors so that they can be more 
 efficient and stay motivated. Before we get to that point, 
 we've got a lot of decisions to make and a lot of work to do 
 internally to provide a foundation on which we can build.

 I'm not exaggerating when I say that this is going to be the 
 most significant change in the D community in the 20 years I've 
 been a part of it. I expect we're going to encounter bumps 
 along the way, but that's okay. We now have a clear vision and 
 purpose, and that makes all the difference.


It would be great if you specify or at least give us a glimpse of 
what this "change" is about. Right now, it sounds like corporate 
propaganda for Ucora
Jun 27 2023
parent reply Mike Parker <aldacron gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 27 June 2023 at 11:30:42 UTC, Francesco Mecca wrote:


 It would be great if you specify or at least give us a glimpse 
 of what this "change" is about. Right now, it sounds like 
 corporate propaganda for Ucora


It's not propaganda. I answered questions about it in BeerConf 
last month, and Adam summarized it here:

https://dpldocs.info/this-week-in-d/Blog.Posted_2023_05_29.html

TLDR; it's about understanding stakeholder motivations and 
looking for opportunities where they align. Right now, we're just 
employing it internally to get our house in order. Down the road, 
when we're able to find volunteers to take on tasks (a few people 
have expressed interest already after the BeerConf session), 
understanding their motivations will help us know who to approach 
first for any given task.

That's just one way in which we'll be employing it. It's helped 
me in recognizing opportunities I wouldn't have before, and it's 
had an impact on the way the DLF team conducts meetings and 
approaches problem solving and planning.

Anyway, the main point of this announcement wasn't IVY, it's that 
we're finally getting organized. IVY is just the tool we're using 
to do it. No D user or contributor needs to pay any attention to 
it if they don't want to.
Jun 27 2023
parent Mike Parker <aldacron gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 27 June 2023 at 12:00:48 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:


 Anyway, the main point of this announcement wasn't IVY, it's 
 that we're finally getting organized. IVY is just the tool 
 we're using to do it. No D user or contributor needs to pay any 
 attention to it if they don't want to.


And I should add, for those who haven't seen it elsewhere, one of 
the changes we've made is that we've incorporated GitHub projects 
into our workflow (some of us more quickly than others). You can 
see what we're working on here:

https://github.com/orgs/dlang/projects?query=is%3Aopen

And if anyone sees something they'd like to pitch in on, please 
get in touch with me.
Jun 27 2023