www.digitalmars.com         C & C++   DMDScript  

digitalmars.D - Evangelizing Your Cool Product

reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
This is a bit of a generic reply to a constant theme I see here.

It pains me to see a lot of great D projects languish in obscurity, and often 
the author(s) eventually get frustrated with that and abandon them.

The problem is that "Field of Dreams", i.e. "build it and they will come" is a 
Hollywood fantasy. The authors simply must promote it. That means, at the
barest 
minimum, writing a nice article that answers the basic questions:

    who
    what
    where
    when
    why
    how

and then getting that article published & promoted in social media, online 
magazines, etc. Note that online magazines are BEGGING for content. Some will 
even PAY MONEY for decent content.

Throwing code up on github isn't good enough. Expecting people to read the 
source code to figure out who/what/where/etc is never going to work. A one line 
announcement "Hi! I just released Dxxxxx! Enjoy!" is going to fail. Hoping that 
others will pick up the flag and carry it for you is a pipe dream.

I know that people often are reluctant to promote their own stuff because they 
feel it's immodest. All I can say is get over it! Look at Donald Trump, Steve 
Jobs, Gene Simmons, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, etc. None of them are/were remotely 
shy about promotion.

Besides, it's fun when others read one's articles and comment on them, a lot 
more fun than waiting to be discovered.
Aug 05 2013
next sibling parent reply "Borislav Kosharov" <bosak gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 5 August 2013 at 19:44:12 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 This is a bit of a generic reply to a constant theme I see here.

 It pains me to see a lot of great D projects languish in 
 obscurity, and often the author(s) eventually get frustrated 
 with that and abandon them.

 The problem is that "Field of Dreams", i.e. "build it and they 
 will come" is a Hollywood fantasy. The authors simply must 
 promote it. That means, at the barest minimum, writing a nice 
 article that answers the basic questions:

    who
    what
    where
    when
    why
    how

 and then getting that article published & promoted in social 
 media, online magazines, etc. Note that online magazines are 
 BEGGING for content. Some will even PAY MONEY for decent 
 content.

 Throwing code up on github isn't good enough. Expecting people 
 to read the source code to figure out who/what/where/etc is 
 never going to work. A one line announcement "Hi! I just 
 released Dxxxxx! Enjoy!" is going to fail. Hoping that others 
 will pick up the flag and carry it for you is a pipe dream.

 I know that people often are reluctant to promote their own 
 stuff because they feel it's immodest. All I can say is get 
 over it! Look at Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Gene Simmons, Jeff 
 Bezos, Elon Musk, etc. None of them are/were remotely shy about 
 promotion.

 Besides, it's fun when others read one's articles and comment 
 on them, a lot more fun than waiting to be discovered.


Wow Walter, your post really motivated me right now. For a few 
days I have this idea about an next gen OS. I only told it to my 
friends and I haven't written it anywhere(but I was planing to). 
Now I will probably create a blog and start writing programming 
articles and explaining ideas I have and projects I work on. But 
the thing that you said about promoting counts for D too. The D 
community is rather small compared to other languages. But in 
recent days I see more and more people starting talking about it. 
 From time to time I see a post about D in reddit and probably 
Dconf '13 boosted the growth. I really hope that D one day 
becomes a success and I will try to write and promote D too in my 
non-currently-existent blog :)
Aug 05 2013
parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 8/5/2013 2:14 PM, Borislav Kosharov wrote:

 Wow Walter, your post really motivated me right now. For a few days I have this
 idea about an next gen OS. I only told it to my friends and I haven't written
it
 anywhere(but I was planing to). Now I will probably create a blog and start
 writing programming articles and explaining ideas I have and projects I work
on.
 But the thing that you said about promoting counts for D too. The D community
is
 rather small compared to other languages. But in recent days I see more and
more
 people starting talking about it. From time to time I see a post about D in
 reddit and probably Dconf '13 boosted the growth. I really hope that D one day
 becomes a success and I will try to write and promote D too in my
 non-currently-existent blog :)


Keep us posted!
Aug 05 2013
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Gambler <fake feather.org.ru> writes:
On 8/5/2013 3:44 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 Throwing code up on github isn't good enough.


On a related note, I almost never hear about D projects on Hacker News.
It's a good place for language promition. Heck, even vanilla github
project get up-voted there if they have some kind of cool factor to them.
Aug 05 2013
next sibling parent "Meta" <jared771 gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 5 August 2013 at 21:51:56 UTC, Gambler wrote:

 On 8/5/2013 3:44 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 Throwing code up on github isn't good enough.


 On a related note, I almost never hear about D projects on 
 Hacker News.
 It's a good place for language promition. Heck, even vanilla 
 github
 project get up-voted there if they have some kind of cool 
 factor to them.


It seems that the D community has been getting better in regards 
to writing about why it's such a great language, but most of the 
stuff I've seen on Hacker News/Reddit is from a select few, i.e., 
Walter, Andrei, a scattering of a few other people... Hopefully, 
though, the recent "call to arms" for article writing will 
facilitate an influx of publicity for D.
Aug 05 2013
prev sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 8/5/2013 2:51 PM, Gambler wrote:

 On a related note, I almost never hear about D projects on Hacker News.
 It's a good place for language promition. Heck, even vanilla github
 project get up-voted there if they have some kind of cool factor to them.



I've posted a number of articles about D on HN. They don't get much traction 
there for whatever reason, but I keep trying.

It's like being becalmed on the ocean in a sailboat. If the wind isn't blowing, 
you won't go anywhere. But if you don't put up your sail, you won't catch any 
wind when it does blow.

Or like the old joke in the advertising industry: "I know I'm wasting half of
my 
money on advertising. The problem is, I don't know which half."
Aug 05 2013
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Jeremy DeHaan" <dehaan.jeremiah gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 5 August 2013 at 19:44:12 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 This is a bit of a generic reply to a constant theme I see here.

 It pains me to see a lot of great D projects languish in 
 obscurity, and often the author(s) eventually get frustrated 
 with that and abandon them.

 The problem is that "Field of Dreams", i.e. "build it and they 
 will come" is a Hollywood fantasy. The authors simply must 
 promote it. That means, at the barest minimum, writing a nice 
 article that answers the basic questions:

    who
    what
    where
    when
    why
    how

 and then getting that article published & promoted in social 
 media, online magazines, etc. Note that online magazines are 
 BEGGING for content. Some will even PAY MONEY for decent 
 content.

 Throwing code up on github isn't good enough. Expecting people 
 to read the source code to figure out who/what/where/etc is 
 never going to work. A one line announcement "Hi! I just 
 released Dxxxxx! Enjoy!" is going to fail. Hoping that others 
 will pick up the flag and carry it for you is a pipe dream.

 I know that people often are reluctant to promote their own 
 stuff because they feel it's immodest. All I can say is get 
 over it! Look at Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Gene Simmons, Jeff 
 Bezos, Elon Musk, etc. None of them are/were remotely shy about 
 promotion.

 Besides, it's fun when others read one's articles and comment 
 on them, a lot more fun than waiting to be discovered.


I think my problem is that there are so many people in the D 
community that I would consider MUCH better at software 
development than myself, so I get pretty self conscious when it 
comes to me talking about my stuff. You're right though, I should 
definitely get over it and spread the word!

I promise I will write some stuff and post in the announce 
section once I have a little more time.(classes are currently 
destroying me)
Aug 05 2013
next sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 8/5/2013 8:44 PM, Jeremy DeHaan wrote:

 I think my problem is that there are so many people in the D community that I
 would consider MUCH better at software development than myself, so I get pretty
 self conscious when it comes to me talking about my stuff. You're right though,
 I should definitely get over it and spread the word!


Yes, you should!


 I promise I will write some stuff and post in the announce section once I have
a
 little more time.


Great!


 (classes are currently destroying me)


Classes in the summer?
Aug 05 2013
prev sibling parent Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Tuesday, August 06, 2013 05:44:25 Jeremy DeHaan wrote:

 I promise I will write some stuff and post in the announce
 section once I have a little more time.(classes are currently
 destroying me)


Then switch to structs. ;)

- Jonathan M Davis
Aug 05 2013
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "qznc" <qznc web.de> writes:
On Monday, 5 August 2013 at 19:44:12 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 This is a bit of a generic reply to a constant theme I see here.

 It pains me to see a lot of great D projects languish in 
 obscurity, and often the author(s) eventually get frustrated 
 with that and abandon them.

 The problem is that "Field of Dreams", i.e. "build it and they 
 will come" is a Hollywood fantasy. The authors simply must 
 promote it. That means, at the barest minimum, writing a nice 
 article that answers the basic questions:

    who
    what
    where
    when
    why
    how

 and then getting that article published & promoted in social 
 media, online magazines, etc. Note that online magazines are 
 BEGGING for content. Some will even PAY MONEY for decent 
 content.

 Throwing code up on github isn't good enough. Expecting people 
 to read the source code to figure out who/what/where/etc is 
 never going to work. A one line announcement "Hi! I just 
 released Dxxxxx! Enjoy!" is going to fail. Hoping that others 
 will pick up the flag and carry it for you is a pipe dream.

 I know that people often are reluctant to promote their own 
 stuff because they feel it's immodest. All I can say is get 
 over it! Look at Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Gene Simmons, Jeff 
 Bezos, Elon Musk, etc. None of them are/were remotely shy about 
 promotion.

 Besides, it's fun when others read one's articles and comment 
 on them, a lot more fun than waiting to be discovered.


You seem to like DrDobbs for publishing your articles. How are
they?
Aug 05 2013
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 8/5/2013 11:01 PM, qznc wrote:

 You seem to like DrDobbs for publishing your articles. How are
 they?


DrDobbs has always been good to me and my efforts, even in the 1980s. The 
editors, first Jon Erickson and now Andrew Binstock, are a pleasure to work 
with. DrDobbs is a great way to reach a wider programming audience.
Aug 06 2013
parent reply =?UTF-8?B?Ikx1w61z?= Marques" <luismarques gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 6 August 2013 at 08:12:26 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 DrDobbs has always been good to me and my efforts, even in the 
 1980s. The editors, first Jon Erickson and now Andrew Binstock, 
 are a pleasure to work with. DrDobbs is a great way to reach a 
 wider programming audience.


How does it work, publishing an article there?
Aug 06 2013
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 8/6/2013 5:32 AM, "Luís Marques" <luismarques gmail.com>" wrote:

 On Tuesday, 6 August 2013 at 08:12:26 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 DrDobbs has always been good to me and my efforts, even in the 1980s. The
 editors, first Jon Erickson and now Andrew Binstock, are a pleasure to work
 with. DrDobbs is a great way to reach a wider programming audience.


 How does it work, publishing an article there?


Contact the editor, Andrew Binstock, and email him your article.
Aug 06 2013
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 2013-08-06 17:13:19 +0000, Walter Bright said:


 On 8/6/2013 5:32 AM, "Luís Marques" <luismarques gmail.com>" wrote:

 On Tuesday, 6 August 2013 at 08:12:26 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 DrDobbs has always been good to me and my efforts, even in the 1980s. The
 editors, first Jon Erickson and now Andrew Binstock, are a pleasure to work
 with. DrDobbs is a great way to reach a wider programming audience.


 
 How does it work, publishing an article there?


 
 Contact the editor, Andrew Binstock, and email him your article.


Walter, at best you may want to introduce Luis to Andrew. A little 
social game goes a long way.

Andrei
Aug 06 2013
parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 8/6/2013 3:24 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 2013-08-06 17:13:19 +0000, Walter Bright said:


 On 8/6/2013 5:32 AM, "Luís Marques" <luismarques gmail.com>" wrote:

 On Tuesday, 6 August 2013 at 08:12:26 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 DrDobbs has always been good to me and my efforts, even in the 1980s. The
 editors, first Jon Erickson and now Andrew Binstock, are a pleasure to work
 with. DrDobbs is a great way to reach a wider programming audience.


 How does it work, publishing an article there?


 Contact the editor, Andrew Binstock, and email him your article.


 Walter, at best you may want to introduce Luis to Andrew. A little social game
 goes a long way.


If anyone has an article ready and wants to publish it in DDJ, I'd be happy to 
arrange an introduction.
Aug 06 2013
prev sibling next sibling parent "eles" <eles eles.com> writes:
On Monday, 5 August 2013 at 19:44:12 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 Throwing code up on github isn't good enough. Expecting people 
 to read the source code to figure out who/what/where/etc is 
 never going to work.


No pun intendended, but this is also why I fought for a better 
changelog at that time. Expecting users to read tons of bugzilla 
entries is as unrealistic at this.
Aug 06 2013
prev sibling parent reply "MattCoder" <mattcoder hotmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 5 August 2013 at 19:44:12 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 ...
 I know that people often are reluctant to promote their own 
 stuff because they feel it's immodest. All I can say is get 
 over it! Look at Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Gene Simmons, Jeff 
 Bezos, Elon Musk, etc. None of them are/were remotely shy about 
 promotion.


I don't think you should just compare programmers/developers with 
entrepreneurs like you did. Of course there are programmers who 
market/promote their own software, but most don't or at least not 
like an entrepreneur would do.

How many bricks Donald Trump helped to put on his buildings? 
None, despite he has made a great fortune and career in 
construction, he is Bachelor of Science in Economics.

Another example is Steve Jobs, how many games he promoted at 
Atari? None, on the other hand he promoted the first Apple 
Computer, but who built that machine was the by the other Steve.

Matheus.
Aug 06 2013
next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 8/6/2013 4:28 PM, MattCoder wrote:

 Another example is Steve Jobs, how many games he promoted at Atari? None, on
the
 other hand he promoted the first Apple Computer, but who built that machine was
 the by the other Steve.


Few of us are lucky enough to have a Steve Jobs to promote what we do.

Lots of very talented people at the time were designing and building homebrew 
computers. (Hell, even *I* made one in 1978, and I'm not even an EE!) They all 
went nowhere and are forgotten today. The only reason we remember Woz and his 
homebrew computer is because of Steve Jobs.

 From what I gather, and I know someone who attended those meetings of the 
Homebrew Club, without Jobs Woz would have made a few computers, given them out 
to his friends, and moved on to something else.

It simply isn't enough to create a great product.

(Back in the early days of my compiler, I partnered with John Haggins who had a 
knack for promotion and made Zortech a success.)
Aug 06 2013
parent reply "eles" <eles eles.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 7 August 2013 at 02:27:42 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 8/6/2013 4:28 PM, MattCoder wrote:
 It simply isn't enough to create a great product.


I did try. At my job. Basically, answers that I received were 
like: "it's unfinished." (they meant language is changing and 
tools are immature)

I do not know if it is helpful of not, or if it is true or not.

But these were the answers that I received.

What I perceived: language should state on those several 
ambiguous issues ( property was quoted, complex numbers) and 
tools should get some maturity (the .so thing for one).
Aug 07 2013
next sibling parent reply "Borislav Kosharov" <bosak gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 7 August 2013 at 14:12:32 UTC, eles wrote:

 On Wednesday, 7 August 2013 at 02:27:42 UTC, Walter Bright 
 wrote:

 On 8/6/2013 4:28 PM, MattCoder wrote:
 It simply isn't enough to create a great product.


 I did try. At my job. Basically, answers that I received were 
 like: "it's unfinished." (they meant language is changing and 
 tools are immature)

 I do not know if it is helpful of not, or if it is true or not.

 But these were the answers that I received.

 What I perceived: language should state on those several 
 ambiguous issues ( property was quoted, complex numbers) and 
 tools should get some maturity (the .so thing for one).


Yea, I don't like how you have to write properties in D. I 
usually write them like this:
 property {
     int myNum() {
         return _myNum;
     }
     void myNum(int value) {
         _myNum = value;
     }
}

I saw that in the D conf it was stated that  property will be 
changed? I was wondering if there is any progress on that and how 
will the new properties look like? Are they going to be replaced 
by templates or something else? Has anyone written his own 
property generators?
Aug 07 2013
parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv> writes:
On Wednesday, 7 August 2013 at 17:01:36 UTC, Borislav Kosharov 
wrote:

 Yea, I don't like how you have to write properties in D. I 
 usually write them like this:
  property {
     int myNum() {
         return _myNum;
     }
     void myNum(int value) {
         _myNum = value;
     }
 }

 I saw that in the D conf it was stated that  property will be 
 changed? I was wondering if there is any progress on that and 
 how will the new properties look like? Are they going to be 
 replaced by templates or something else? Has anyone written his 
 own property generators?


There is a pending pull request from Kenji: 
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/2305 , but 
does not do anything crazy, just enforces existing approach and 
addresses some of nasty corner cases.


passes, people are more and more reluctant to make any breaking 
change unless it fixes some really major problem.

I personally just avoid using them at all.
Aug 07 2013
parent "eles" <eles eles.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 7 August 2013 at 17:09:16 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 On Wednesday, 7 August 2013 at 17:01:36 UTC, Borislav Kosharov 
 I personally just avoid using them at all.


That's the danger that roots in the lack of clarity. And, I 
cannot blame people outside thinking along the same lines about 
the entire D: "I personally just avoid using it at all".

Sad, but true.
Aug 07 2013
prev sibling next sibling parent "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv> writes:
On Wednesday, 7 August 2013 at 14:12:32 UTC, eles wrote:

 What I perceived: language should state on those several 
 ambiguous issues ( property was quoted, complex numbers) and 
 tools should get some maturity (the .so thing for one).


I think it is a very important moment that is often 
underestimated. Sometimes lack of clear plans for future is even 
more harmful than existing buggy implementation. For some 
features most stressing fact is not they do not work or will work 
in unwelcome way - it is the fact that no authority provides 
clear opinion on how they should work.
Aug 07 2013
prev sibling parent "eles" <eles eles.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 7 August 2013 at 14:12:32 UTC, eles wrote:

 On Wednesday, 7 August 2013 at 02:27:42 UTC, Walter Bright 
 wrote:

 On 8/6/2013 4:28 PM, MattCoder wrote:


 What I perceived: language should state on those several 
 ambiguous issues ( property was quoted, complex numbers) and 
 tools should get some maturity (the .so thing for one).


For example: the .so thing was critical for what we had in mind 
at that time: write MEX files for Matlab. Those MEX files are 
nothing else than some dynamic libraries that expose a particular 
function mexFunction() that is recognized by Matlab. They can 
speed up scientific computation in Matlab, by coding number 
crunching in that dynamic library.

More: the DLL itself is opaque. No customer cared in what 
language we did implement the DLLs.

But we were not able to pick D for that task. You know why.
Aug 07 2013
prev sibling parent "Wyatt" <wyatt.epp gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 6 August 2013 at 23:28:44 UTC, MattCoder wrote:

 I don't think you should just compare programmers/developers 
 with entrepreneurs like you did. Of course there are 
 programmers who market/promote their own software, but most 
 don't or at least not like an entrepreneur would do.


Maybe those weren't great examples, but the underlying message is 
definitely true.  It's pretty clear at this point that promotion 
is an important part of going indie with games; look at 
Introversion, Dejobaan, Gaslamp, Positech, Wolfire, and whatever 
Jon Blow calls his outfit.  And how many years was Phil Fish 
writing about Fez?  For the tools side, Adam Saltsman with flixel 
and Nicolas Cannasse with Haxe are decent examples.

Or Mozilla.  Ooh man, Mozilla is a good one.  How popular do you 
think Firefox would be without the concentrated campaign to "take 
back the web" and all that?

Writing about your stuff and telling people about your stuff is 
just super important (even if doing it kind of sucks).

-Wyatt
Aug 07 2013