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digitalmars.D - Points of Failure

reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
http://spot.livejournal.com/308370.html

Anyone care to total up the fail points for D?
Jul 28 2015
next sibling parent "Alex Parrill" <initrd.gz gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 28 July 2015 at 19:11:24 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 http://spot.livejournal.com/308370.html

 Anyone care to total up the fail points for D?


Here's a spreadsheet I've set up, feel free to test and add a 
comment if a particular point passes or fails:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17BlHF_2VAl2UUi6acymeirvVKxVZPsUnnPkLP-vX1Ec/edit?usp=sharing
Jul 28 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Jonathan M Davis" <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 28 July 2015 at 19:11:24 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 http://spot.livejournal.com/308370.html

 Anyone care to total up the fail points for D?


LOL. There's a lot of highly subjective stuff on that list, and 
some of it seems to think that normal practices are bad, like

* Your code tries to install into /opt or /usr/local

It's pretty much _standard_ on Linux systems that make install is 
going to put your stuff in /usr/local unless you told configure 
to use a different PREFIX. And on FreeBSD, pretty much everything 
actually gets installed in /usr/local normally anyway.

He definitely have some good points, but he has enough in there 
that a _lot_ of people would disagree with on that the list 
becomes pretty useless as an actual metric IMHO. And his scoring 
system is going to put most projects into fail territory _very_ 
quickly.

An interesting read though.

- Jonathan M Davis
Jul 28 2015
next sibling parent reply "Alex Parrill" <initrd.gz gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 28 July 2015 at 19:30:45 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 On Tuesday, 28 July 2015 at 19:11:24 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 http://spot.livejournal.com/308370.html

 Anyone care to total up the fail points for D?


 LOL. There's a lot of highly subjective stuff on that list, and 
 some of it seems to think that normal practices are bad, like...

 - Jonathan M Davis


Yea, I disagree on the "/usr/local is bad" and "anything other 
than GNU make is bad". A few of the items are over the top too 
("Your releases are only in an encapsulation format that you 
invented" Do people really do this?!).
Jul 28 2015
parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 7/28/2015 12:35 PM, Alex Parrill wrote:

 A few of the items are over the top too ("Your releases are only in an
 encapsulation format that you invented" Do people really do this?!).


I think that's just part of a larger point to use standardized tools as much as 
practical, and not use custom tools that are not relevant to the product being 
developed.

I'd probably add to this list using a build system that required installation
of 
a dozen programming languages :-)
Jul 28 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Minas Mina" <minas_0 hotmail.co.uk> writes:
On Tuesday, 28 July 2015 at 19:30:45 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 And his scoring system is going to put most projects into fail 
 territory _very_ quickly.

 An interesting read though.

 - Jonathan M Davis


Because most project fail?
Jul 28 2015
parent "Jonathan M Davis" <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 28 July 2015 at 19:45:03 UTC, Minas Mina wrote:

 On Tuesday, 28 July 2015 at 19:30:45 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
 wrote:

 And his scoring system is going to put most projects into fail 
 territory _very_ quickly.

 An interesting read though.

 - Jonathan M Davis


 Because most project fail?


And do _any_ of them fail for the reasons on this list? Heck, the 
Linux kernel is _way_ into fail territory the way he scored it. 
There are plenty of reasons that open source projects fail, but I 
question that any of them actually failed because of anything on 
this list.

- Jonathan M Davis
Jul 28 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 7/28/2015 12:30 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 LOL. There's a lot of highly subjective stuff on that list, and some of it
seems
 to think that normal practices are bad, like


I agree, but it's still worth taking a look at it and seeing if there are any 
action items we should address.
Jul 28 2015
parent "Brian Rogoff" <brogoff gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 28 July 2015 at 21:27:32 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 7/28/2015 12:30 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 LOL. There's a lot of highly subjective stuff on that list, 
 and some of it seems
 to think that normal practices are bad, like


 I agree, but it's still worth taking a look at it and seeing if 
 there are any action items we should address.


The last time I tried to build dmd from source (on OS X) I found 
the process pretty clunky compared to building similar languages, 
like, say OCaml or Nim. I don't recall all of the pain points, 
but I don't do it any more; I just grab the binary.

It would be great if the dmd build from source was just a few 
simple steps I could run (git clone repo, make, make install, or 
similar) and be confident that I had a working dmd. If that's how 
it is now, just disregard this message...
Jul 28 2015
prev sibling parent reply "H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d" <digitalmars-d puremagic.com> writes:
On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 07:30:43PM +0000, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d
wrote:

 On Tuesday, 28 July 2015 at 19:11:24 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

http://spot.livejournal.com/308370.html




[...]

 He definitely have some good points, but he has enough in there that a
 _lot_ of people would disagree with on that the list becomes pretty
 useless as an actual metric IMHO. And his scoring system is going to
 put most projects into fail territory _very_ quickly.


[...]

A lot of his points are highly subjective, e.g., I don't see why having
a web viewer for the source control system is so absolutely important
that it's worth 5 points of FAIL. Do people seriously read through
source code on a web viewer (as opposed to, say, git cloning it and
looking at it / building it locally)?!

And the Linux kernel would get +30 points of FAIL, since Linus wrote
git. :-D

And contrary to his insistence on using GNU make, *I* say that projects
that *use* any variant of make ought to get +5 points of FAIL.

Installing into /opt or /usr/local is actually recommended practice
according to various Linux standards (e.g., FHS).

It cracks me up that one of the comments hail this list as "objective
criteria". Hah.


T

-- 
The best way to destroy a cause is to defend it poorly.
Jul 28 2015
parent reply "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 28 July 2015 at 22:28:17 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 A lot of his points are highly subjective, e.g., I don't see 
 why having a web viewer for the source control system is so 
 absolutely important that it's worth 5 points of FAIL. Do 
 people seriously read through source code on a web viewer (as 
 opposed to, say, git cloning it and looking at it / building it 
 locally)?!


Yes, I do it all the time. I'm often interested in just one small 
file and don't want to download dozens of megabytes of irrelevant 
garbage to get to them.
Jul 28 2015
parent reply "H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d" <digitalmars-d puremagic.com> writes:
On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 10:41:55PM +0000, Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 On Tuesday, 28 July 2015 at 22:28:17 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

A lot of his points are highly subjective, e.g., I don't see why
having a web viewer for the source control system is so absolutely
important that it's worth 5 points of FAIL. Do people seriously read
through source code on a web viewer (as opposed to, say, git cloning
it and looking at it / building it locally)?!


 
 Yes, I do it all the time. I'm often interested in just one small file
 and don't want to download dozens of megabytes of irrelevant garbage
 to get to them.


I see. So this is one of those things where I do thing differently from
everybody else, I guess?  Man, do I feel old... ;-)


T

-- 
Acid falls with the rain; with love comes the pain.
Jul 28 2015
next sibling parent reply "Tofu Ninja" <emmons0 purdue.edu> writes:
On Tuesday, 28 July 2015 at 22:55:03 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 10:41:55PM +0000, Adam D. Ruppe via 
 Digitalmars-d wrote:

 On Tuesday, 28 July 2015 at 22:28:17 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

A lot of his points are highly subjective, e.g., I don't see 
why having a web viewer for the source control system is so 
absolutely important that it's worth 5 points of FAIL. Do 
people seriously read through source code on a web viewer (as 
opposed to, say, git cloning it and looking at it / building 
it locally)?!


 
 Yes, I do it all the time. I'm often interested in just one 
 small file and don't want to download dozens of megabytes of 
 irrelevant garbage to get to them.


 I see. So this is one of those things where I do thing 
 differently from everybody else, I guess?  Man, do I feel 
 old... ;-)


 T


Hah yeah, even when I have the source to phobos on my hard drive, 
I still often opt to just read some random file in github because 
it takes me fewer clicks to get open.
Jul 28 2015
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 7/28/2015 4:04 PM, Tofu Ninja wrote:

 Hah yeah, even when I have the source to phobos on my hard drive, I still often
 opt to just read some random file in github because it takes me fewer clicks to
 get open.


Having it viewable on github also makes it very convenient to embed links to 
specific source lines.
Jul 28 2015
parent "burjui" <bytefu gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 28 July 2015 at 23:29:42 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 Having it viewable on github also makes it very convenient to 
 embed links to specific source lines.


Indeed. Also GitHub makes it easy to contribute (at least small 
fixes), because you can fork, edit and make a pull request all in 
one place.

BTW, is it worth so much discussion? It's only 5 points :)
Jul 29 2015
prev sibling parent reply "Jonathan M Davis" <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 28 July 2015 at 22:55:03 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 10:41:55PM +0000, Adam D. Ruppe via 
 Digitalmars-d wrote:

 On Tuesday, 28 July 2015 at 22:28:17 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

A lot of his points are highly subjective, e.g., I don't see 
why having a web viewer for the source control system is so 
absolutely important that it's worth 5 points of FAIL. Do 
people seriously read through source code on a web viewer (as 
opposed to, say, git cloning it and looking at it / building 
it locally)?!


 
 Yes, I do it all the time. I'm often interested in just one 
 small file and don't want to download dozens of megabytes of 
 irrelevant garbage to get to them.


 I see. So this is one of those things where I do thing 
 differently from everybody else, I guess?  Man, do I feel 
 old... ;-)


Well, I hate reading the source online too (much easier to just 
read it in gvim and be able to use grep to find stuff across 
files). So, if I'm going to be doing much reading of source, I'm 
going to download it, but at the same time, if I only have to 
look at one file and not look deeply, I'll probably look online 
rather than figuring out how to get the source locally.

- Jonathan M Davis
Jul 28 2015
parent reply "H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d" <digitalmars-d puremagic.com> writes:
On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 11:21:00PM +0000, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d
wrote:

 On Tuesday, 28 July 2015 at 22:55:03 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 10:41:55PM +0000, Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d
wrote:

On Tuesday, 28 July 2015 at 22:28:17 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

A lot of his points are highly subjective, e.g., I don't see >why


having a web viewer for the source control system is so >absolutely
important that it's worth 5 points of FAIL. Do >people seriously
read through source code on a web viewer (as >opposed to, say, git
cloning it and looking at it / building >it locally)?!

Yes, I do it all the time. I'm often interested in just one small
file and don't want to download dozens of megabytes of irrelevant
garbage to get to them.


I see. So this is one of those things where I do thing differently
from everybody else, I guess?  Man, do I feel old... ;-)


 
 Well, I hate reading the source online too (much easier to just read
 it in gvim and be able to use grep to find stuff across files). So, if
 I'm going to be doing much reading of source, I'm going to download
 it, but at the same time, if I only have to look at one file and not
 look deeply, I'll probably look online rather than figuring out how to
 get the source locally.


[...]

Hmm. I would've thought things couldn't possibly get easier than `git
clone $url; vim $pathname`...

That's one of the nicest thing about git: you aren't bound to a server
and you don't have to setup a ton of stuff just to checkout some random
project that caught your interest. And you can just `rm -rf` the clone
once you're done with it, if you decide that it's not interesting after
all.


T

-- 
What do you get if you drop a piano down a mineshaft? A flat minor.
Jul 29 2015
next sibling parent "Kagamin" <spam here.lot> writes:
On Wednesday, 29 July 2015 at 15:21:43 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 git


You don't only do things differently from everybody else, you do 
them as if nobody else even exists.
Jul 29 2015
prev sibling parent reply "Alex Parrill" <initrd.gz gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 29 July 2015 at 15:21:43 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 Hmm. I would've thought things couldn't possibly get easier 
 than `git clone $url; vim $pathname`...


`git clone` can take awhile with large repositories, like mono.
Jul 29 2015
parent "burjui" <bytefu gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 29 July 2015 at 16:00:35 UTC, Alex Parrill wrote:

 `git clone` can take awhile with large repositories, like mono.


Also not all people have a decent Internet connection, so it's 
just impractical to wait 10 minutes just for one file. For 
example, the only option I have at home is 4 Mbit ADSL, and it 
sucks big-time these days. The general principle applies to 
everything, not only to browsing sources: the less networking you 
have to deal with, the better. So being able to view a single 
file online instead of cloning the whole repository is a win, as 
well as downloading individual packages in a package manager 
instead of downloading recent system images.

And of course, you can get a single file from a Git repository, 
*if it's explicitly enabled in there* : 
http://stackoverflow.com/a/1126333/888720
But do you really want to type something like:
$ git archive --remote=git github.com:foo/bar.git 
--prefix=path/to/ HEAD:path/to/ |  tar xvf -
?

Obvious stuff is so obvious.
Jul 30 2015
prev sibling parent Steven Schveighoffer <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On 7/28/15 3:11 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 http://spot.livejournal.com/308370.html

 Anyone care to total up the fail points for D?


When reading this, consider that it's over 6 years old.

-Steve
Jul 28 2015