• jasonw <user webmails.org> Mar 30 2011
• so <so so.so> Mar 31 2011
• bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> Mar 31 2011
• Bruno Medeiros <brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> Apr 07 2011
• Matthias Pleh <jens konrad.net> Apr 07 2011
• "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> Apr 08 2011
• so <so so.so> Apr 08 2011
• Christopher Bergqvist <spambox0 digitalpoetry.se> Mar 31 2011

jasonw <user webmails.org> writes:

Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote:

 On 3/29/11 4:37 PM, so wrote:
 [snip]
 I find his posts among the most informative.


 I don't meant to offend anyone here but I think it's worth making a 
 point for your benefit and others'. If you are interested in programming 
 language theory, probably there are better sources of information to 
 use. Though I don't consider myself anywhere near an expert, my masters 
 thesis was on programming language theory, which gives me some amount of 
 perspective. "Cargo culture" would be a gross exaggeration, but much of 
 the knowledge disseminated by bearophile is superficially absorbed 
 literature that is served back semi-digested along with a hodge-podge of 
 personal opinions of various degrees of correctness.
 
 The only reason I felt compelled to make this point is the (now obvious) 
 risk in taking such posts as a good source of information. It is is 
 dangerous to take non-critically the occasional enormity that sneaks in. 
 That's why I suggested in the past and am suggesting it again - please 
 don't feign expertise as some may actually fall for it.


You hit the nail on the head here. I see two real problems with his messages:

1) he's "force fitting" every possible language feature he learns into D.
Clearly some features are useful, others are not, and this is why many of
bearophile's ideas fail and generate endless debates and unnecessary noise. He
can't see that the features just don't fit in.

If you lack the vision of good language design as a whole, you shouldn't start
suggesting new features like this. I'd appreciate it more if we won't introduce
"new" concepts in this way. If some feature X is terribly useful in some
language Y, why not explain the feature in that concept. It's a total failure
to port every possible feature to D in one way or another before even
discussing the feature in general. If we start talking programming language
discussion in a neutral tone, I don't think digitalmars.d is the best place to
continue. The traffic is already quite large for someone who doesn't work in
the core language development team

2) Programming language design requires rigorous definition of terms and other
things. The D community doesn't encourage using precise, well-defined, unique
terms. This leads to some subtleties and other problems in the discussions.
Again I think the best place for general PL discussion is somewhere else,
preferable in the academia. I'm sorry to say this, but I likely need to study
how to put him in the kill file. The whole bearophile phenomenon takes place on
an isolated island somewhere in the dark corners of D's history. The bug
reports and benchmarks are priceless, but these "lectures" about other language
often aren't.

 
 I have no doubt great personal improvement has been made in the past 
 years, but the tone is still an octave above what it could be at its best.


That's true, but it's also a bad sign that he doesn't react in any way when we
are criticizing him in the public.

so <so so.so> writes:

On Thu, 31 Mar 2011 05:09:44 +0300, jasonw <user webmails.org> wrote:

 You hit the nail on the head here. I see two real problems with his  
 messages:

 1) he's "force fitting" every possible language feature he learns into  
 D. Clearly some features are useful, others are not, and this is why  
 many of bearophile's ideas fail and generate endless debates and  
 unnecessary noise. He can't see that the features just don't fit in.


This is not true, there are ideas here from many others as well that  
generate endless debates.
The reason is as far as i can see not always the ideas "just don't fit  
in". The reasons IMO are the chain of command and the resources.
Take the last long discussion on named arguments, i don't think anyone was  
against it.
One another thing is that a few of us evasive to some questions.

 If you lack the vision of good language design as a whole, you shouldn't  
 start suggesting new features like this. I'd appreciate it more if we  
 won't introduce "new" concepts in this way.


This is oxymoron, by that logic there is not a single soul on earth with  
that vision.
You just dismissed whole academia, isn't this the way it operates?
Don't you think this is harmful? Why does D2 exist? D1 wasn't enough?

 2) Programming language design requires rigorous definition of terms and  
 other things. The D community doesn't encourage using precise,  
 well-defined, unique terms. This leads to some subtleties and other  
 problems in the discussions. Again I think the best place for general PL  
 discussion is somewhere else, preferable in the academia. I'm sorry to  
 say this, but I likely need to study how to put him in the kill file.  
 The whole bearophile phenomenon takes place on an isolated island  
 somewhere in the dark corners of D's history. The bug reports and  
 benchmarks are priceless, but these "lectures" about other language  
 often aren't.


I agree he should slow down proposing, at the same time people better stop  
ad hominem attacks.
If it is way to go, we all need to shut up.

bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:

Christopher Bergqvist:

 Why not split this NG in two?
 d-pragmatism - Concrete stuff, TDPL + absolutely necessary adjustments
 which are probably discussed first in the other ng...
 d-theory - A place to discuss the future of D, stuff with a longer timeline.
 
 Or maybe we should accept this NG for being a mix of both and that at
 least d-announce is d-pragmatism condensed, kind of.


I am against a further NG split, I have explained why in another post. But here
are some more comments.

On one hand online groups of people that work to develop some software need
some discipline and organization of their work, to improve their productivity.

On the other hand it's all voluntary service, most people don't get paid to
help D development, so they _can't_ be managed as employed people, especially
in a public forum designed for generic discussions about a language.

Some people are more interested in coding a lot, other people are more
interested in talking and ideas, and so on. If such desires aren't respected,
some people may just decrease their interest in the community, if not leave.
And given the small size of this group, this is bad.

This is why I have said those discussions are not eating away lot of coding
time that's usable for Phobos and GSoC: because some people are not interested
in writing lot of Phobos code or doing GSoC, so if they get shut up, the total
coding time/mind share for Phobos/GSoC don't increase significantly.

And from what I have seen on myself (I have written more than 100_000 lines of
D1 code), even people that do want to write lot of code don't waste a lot of
"coding time" on the discussions, because their brain needs rest once in a
while while they write down code. Writing down some answers about ideas doesn't
reduce a lot the time they spend coding.

That said, now work on the already designed/planned features, on Phobos and on
GSoC is more important than inventing new language features for D3. Still the
group must keep being friendly toward people that want to talk about more
general things. There are already groups focused on DMD development, Phobos,
etc.

Bye,
bearophile

Bruno Medeiros <brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> writes:

On 01/04/2011 01:50, bearophile wrote:
 On the other hand it's all voluntary service, most people don't get paid to
help D development, so they_can't_  be managed as employed people, especially
in a public forum designed for generic discussions about a language.

 Some people are more interested in coding a lot, other people are more
interested in talking and ideas, and so on. If such desires aren't respected,
some people may just decrease their interest in the community, if not leave.
And given the small size of this group, this is bad.


Frankly, (and regardless of how small our group may be) if the people 
leaving the community would be of those "more interested in talking and 
ideas" than "coding a lot", I don't think it would be bad at all.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer

Matthias Pleh <jens konrad.net> writes:

Am 01.04.2011 02:50, schrieb bearophile:
 inventing new language features for D3


Why do you always mention D3.
I always hated the M$ strategy to release every 2 years a new C#/.Net 
version.
I'm satisfied with D2, and let's improve it in quality not in quantity 
of features.


just my 2 cents
°Matthias

"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:

On Thu, 07 Apr 2011 18:46:06 -0400, Matthias Pleh <jens konrad.net> wrote:

 Am 01.04.2011 02:50, schrieb bearophile:
 inventing new language features for D3


 Why do you always mention D3.
 I always hated the M$ strategy to release every 2 years a new C#/.Net  
 version.
 I'm satisfied with D2, and let's improve it in quality not in quantity  
 of features.


D2 is essentially feature-frozen.  Very little can change in terms of the  
language.  D3 is the logical place to put radical new feature ideas.  It  
has nothing to do with a schedule, it has to do with what version of the  
language has the ability to accept bearophile's pythonesque ideas ;)

-Steve

so <so so.so> writes:

On Thu, 07 Apr 2011 23:45:54 +0300, Bruno Medeiros  
<brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> wrote:

 On 01/04/2011 01:50, bearophile wrote:
 On the other hand it's all voluntary service, most people don't get  
 paid to help D development, so they_can't_  be managed as employed  
 people, especially in a public forum designed for generic discussions  
 about a language.

 Some people are more interested in coding a lot, other people are more  
 interested in talking and ideas, and so on. If such desires aren't  
 respected, some people may just decrease their interest in the  
 community, if not leave. And given the small size of this group, this  
 is bad.


 Frankly, (and regardless of how small our group may be) if the people  
 leaving the community would be of those "more interested in talking and  
 ideas" than "coding a lot", I don't think it would be bad at all.


You could have as well signed it - Flat Earth Society

Christopher Bergqvist <spambox0 digitalpoetry.se> writes:

Why not split this NG in two?
d-pragmatism - Concrete stuff, TDPL + absolutely necessary adjustments
which are probably discussed first in the other ng...
d-theory - A place to discuss the future of D, stuff with a longer timeline.

Or maybe we should accept this NG for being a mix of both and that at
least d-announce is d-pragmatism condensed, kind of.

On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 10:26 AM, so <so so.so> wrote:
 On Thu, 31 Mar 2011 05:09:44 +0300, jasonw <user webmails.org> wrote:

 You hit the nail on the head here. I see two real problems with his
 messages:

 1) he's "force fitting" every possible language feature he learns into D.
 Clearly some features are useful, others are not, and this is why many of
 bearophile's ideas fail and generate endless debates and unnecessary noise.
 He can't see that the features just don't fit in.


 This is not true, there are ideas here from many others as well that
 generate endless debates.
 The reason is as far as i can see not always the ideas "just don't fit in".
 The reasons IMO are the chain of command and the resources.
 Take the last long discussion on named arguments, i don't think anyone was
 against it.
 One another thing is that a few of us evasive to some questions.

 If you lack the vision of good language design as a whole, you shouldn't
 start suggesting new features like this. I'd appreciate it more if we won't
 introduce "new" concepts in this way.


 This is oxymoron, by that logic there is not a single soul on earth with
 that vision.
 You just dismissed whole academia, isn't this the way it operates?
 Don't you think this is harmful? Why does D2 exist? D1 wasn't enough?

 2) Programming language design requires rigorous definition of terms and
 other things. The D community doesn't encourage using precise, well-defined,
 unique terms. This leads to some subtleties and other problems in the
 discussions. Again I think the best place for general PL discussion is
 somewhere else, preferable in the academia. I'm sorry to say this, but I
 likely need to study how to put him in the kill file. The whole bearophile
 phenomenon takes place on an isolated island somewhere in the dark corners
 of D's history. The bug reports and benchmarks are priceless, but these
 "lectures" about other language often aren't.


 I agree he should slow down proposing, at the same time people better stop
 ad hominem attacks.
 If it is way to go, we all need to shut up.