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digitalmars.D - The birth of =?UTF-8?B?4oSra2Vyw7Zu?=

reply Joseph Rushton Wakeling <joseph.wakeling webdrake.net> writes:
Hi all,

I understand that Andrew Edwards declined to have his talk recorded, and the
slides have not been uploaded either.  So, what was it actually about?  The
abstract is ... not exactly informative. :-P

Thanks & best wishes,

    -- Joe
Jun 18 2013
next sibling parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:09:51 -0400, Joseph Rushton Wakeling  
<joseph.wakeling webdrake.net> wrote:


 Hi all,

 I understand that Andrew Edwards declined to have his talk recorded, and  
 the
 slides have not been uploaded either.  So, what was it actually about?   
 The
 abstract is ... not exactly informative. :-P


I can do my best here, from memory. If I get anything wrong, please  
correct me!

The first part of Andrew's talk was about his personal journey to the  
point where he was standing before us.  Service in the Marine Corps (thank  
you, Andrew), an interest in computers, being someone who was always  
inspired to contribute to society as a software developer.  His talk  
included several funny anecdotes, I would not do them justice to repeat  
them here from my bad memory :)

So then he talked about Akeron, his company that he wants to use to  
promote several things.  One is helping people learn about D.  To that  
end, he has established the web site dtutor.org (which Andrei registered  
during his talk I believe).  See his announcement here:   
http://forum.dlang.org/post/km6ccu$1ads$1 digitalmars.com

If I recall correctly, he has interest specifically in Natural Language  
Processing, and in helping people learn D.  There was also something about  
the USMC trying to develop some sort of software that they had difficulty  
finishing, and I think he wanted to help them develop that using D, but I  
am really quite unsure of the details on that.  I'm sure at some point, it  
will become more clear.

It was an unusual talk, to say the least.  And I applaud his efforts to  
try and help people learn how to program, especially in D.  I would like  
to see a premier and popular site spring out of dtutor.org.

I know this is short on details, but it was over a month ago.  Andrew, you  
may want to post an executive summary of your talk based on your slides,  
to set the record straight :)

-Steve
Jun 18 2013
parent reply Joseph Rushton Wakeling <joseph.wakeling webdrake.net> writes:
On 06/18/2013 11:37 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 I can do my best here, from memory. If I get anything wrong, please correct me!


Thanks very much for the summary.  It sounds like it was an interesting talk,
and I'm sad it wasn't recorded, although I imagine Andrew had good reasons for
his request.


 The first part of Andrew's talk was about his personal journey to the point
 where he was standing before us.  Service in the Marine Corps (thank you,
 Andrew), an interest in computers, being someone who was always inspired to
 contribute to society as a software developer.  His talk included several funny
 anecdotes, I would not do them justice to repeat them here from my bad memory
:)
 
 So then he talked about Akeron, his company that he wants to use to promote
 several things.  One is helping people learn about D.  To that end, he has
 established the web site dtutor.org (which Andrei registered during his talk I
 believe).  See his announcement here: 
 http://forum.dlang.org/post/km6ccu$1ads$1 digitalmars.com


I hadn't connected Andrew with Tyro[17].  dtutor.org sounds very cool, although
it doesn't seem to currently point to anything, at least for me (the browser
starts trying to load an IP address and never gets anywhere, apart from "D
Tutorials" appearing in the tab title).


 I know this is short on details, but it was over a month ago.  Andrew, you may
 want to post an executive summary of your talk based on your slides, to set the
 record straight :)


I confess that when I saw the word Åkerön, in the absence of further details
I
assumed it was most likely to be some kind of online fantasy RPG ... ;-)
Jun 18 2013
next sibling parent reply "bearophile" <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Joseph Rushton Wakeling:


 I confess that when I saw the word Åkerön, in the absence of 
 further details I
 assumed it was most likely to be some kind of online fantasy 
 RPG ... ;-)


I presume Akeron is meant to ferry (carry) people toward a 
knowledge of D :-) The Styx represents the pain to endure to 
learn it, etc.

Bye,
bearophile
Jun 18 2013
next sibling parent reply Joseph Rushton Wakeling <joseph.wakeling webdrake.net> writes:
On 06/19/2013 01:55 AM, bearophile wrote:

 I presume Akeron is meant to ferry (carry) people toward a knowledge of D :-)
 The Styx represents the pain to endure to learn it, etc.


That's Acheron, and D was created by Digital Mars, not Digital Hades ... :-P

Amusing question -- how does everyone think it should be pronounced?  And how
does Andrew pronounce it?
Jun 18 2013
parent reply Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2013-06-19 03:09, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:


 Amusing question -- how does everyone think it should be pronounced?  And how
 does Andrew pronounce it?


It looks very Swedish. To pronounce it in Swedish with English 
sounds/letters would look something like this:

aakeroen

Å - should be pronounced something like the "aw" in English "saw"
ö - like the English "e" or "i" in "her" or "sir"

The "e" and "k" should be pronounced like the "e" and "k" in "elk".

Find some sound files on Wikipedia:

Å - 
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Close-mid_back_rounded_vowel.ogg

Ö - 
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Close-mid_front_rounded_vowel.ogg

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Jun 19 2013
parent reply Joseph Rushton Wakeling <joseph.wakeling webdrake.net> writes:
On 06/19/2013 10:32 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:

 Å - should be pronounced something like the "aw" in English "saw"


Interesting that you relate it to "aw".  I would have said it sounds like an "O"
pronounced more in the back of the throat than usual, but now I think of it,
it's almost halfway between the "O" and "aw" sounds.
Jun 19 2013
next sibling parent reply "John Colvin" <john.loughran.colvin gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 19 June 2013 at 11:03:11 UTC, Joseph Rushton 
Wakeling wrote:

 On 06/19/2013 10:32 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:

 Å - should be pronounced something like the "aw" in English 
 "saw"


 Interesting that you relate it to "aw".  I would have said it 
 sounds like an "O"
 pronounced more in the back of the throat than usual, but now I 
 think of it,
 it's almost halfway between the "O" and "aw" sounds.


That's kindof how I think about it for Norwegian.
Jun 19 2013
parent Joseph Rushton Wakeling <joseph.wakeling webdrake.net> writes:
On 06/19/2013 12:08 PM, John Colvin wrote:

 That's kindof how I think about it for Norwegian.


For me it was Danish, and it always makes me think of going for a bådfart :-)
Jun 19 2013
prev sibling parent Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2013-06-19 13:02, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:


 Interesting that you relate it to "aw".  I would have said it sounds like an
"O"
 pronounced more in the back of the throat than usual, but now I think of it,
 it's almost halfway between the "O" and "aw" sounds.


"aw" and "å" are not the same sound but the closest I could come up 
with. There's also the audio links.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Jun 19 2013
prev sibling parent "Tyro[17]" <ridimz yahoo.com> writes:
On 6/18/13 8:55 PM, bearophile wrote:

 Joseph Rushton Wakeling:


 I confess that when I saw the word Åkerön, in the absence of further
 details I
 assumed it was most likely to be some kind of online fantasy RPG ... ;-)




Back in my youth... when video games were all I could think about, that 
would have been a real possibility.


 I presume Akeron is meant to ferry (carry) people toward a knowledge of
 D :-) The Styx represents the pain to endure to learn it, etc.

 Bye,
 bearophile


That's pretty good. I like it. From now on, that's what I'll tell the 
people that it means. There wasn't much though that went into the name 
though. It's simply a combination of the first names of two very 
important people who remain the inspiration behind everything I do in 
life. I'm not kidding though, when people ask I'll give them 
bearophile's interpretation. It's way more creative than mine.

-- 

Andrew Edwards
--------------------
http://www.akeron.co
auto getAddress() {
     string location = " ", period = ".";
     return ("info" ~ location ~ "afidem" ~ period ~ "org");
}
Jun 18 2013
prev sibling parent reply "Tyro[17]" <ridimz yahoo.com> writes:
On 6/18/13 8:41 PM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:

 On 06/18/2013 11:37 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 I can do my best here, from memory. If I get anything wrong, please correct me!




[...]

 So then he talked about Akeron, his company that he wants to use to promote
 several things.  One is helping people learn about D.  To that end, he has
 established the web site dtutor.org (which Andrei registered during his talk I
 believe).  See his announcement here:
 http://forum.dlang.org/post/km6ccu$1ads$1 digitalmars.com


 I hadn't connected Andrew with Tyro[17].  dtutor.org sounds very cool, although
 it doesn't seem to currently point to anything, at least for me (the browser
 starts trying to load an IP address and never gets anywhere, apart from "D
 Tutorials" appearing in the tab title).


The site is not active at the moment... I wasted my entire month's 
bandwidth allocation allocation in six days trying to properly configure 
a server on the VPN had to move that part of my learning to a local box. 
Running low on funds so was not able to get one until this past Friday. 
I picked up a brand new Mac mini for half price, configured it to run 
Ubuntu 13.04 server and am playing around with that right now. As soon 
as I'm comfortable with setting it up I'll return configure the site.

Installing the OS of course is painless. My current issue is not knowing 
what configurations I should make to secure the system. Speaking with 
dav1d I know I at least need two accounts other than root. An 
administrator's account and a user with zero access to sudo. I need to 
set up nginx but I'm not sure to what extent I need to configure it. I 
have some instructions from dav1d I must revisit. After that I need to 
install DUB and Vibe-d and use supervisor to launch the site (not sure 
about supervisor at the moment will have to play with it later, do I 
launch nginx as root and then supervisor from the user account?). Just a 
couple things to sort out with the server settings.

After that's all done, will need to clone runestone and start working on 
porting it... that's where the real trouble begins I guess.

[...]


-- 

Andrew Edwards
--------------------
http://www.akeron.co
auto getAddress() {
     string location = " ", period = ".";
     return ("info" ~ location ~ "afidem" ~ period ~ "org");
}
Jun 18 2013
parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 23:14:16 -0400, Tyro[17] <ridimz yahoo.com> wrote:


 The site is not active at the moment... I wasted my entire month's  
 bandwidth allocation allocation in six days trying to properly configure  
 a server on the VPN had to move that part of my learning to a local box.


I think you need to find another hosting company...

At this point, you don't need concurrency, you need freedom of bandwidth  
and hard drive space.

But your current plan is good -- get it all working on a local box, then  
move to the server.

I think for now, an under construction site that points at dlang.org would  
be good.

-Steve
Jun 18 2013
next sibling parent reply "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh quickfur.ath.cx> writes:
On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 11:55:19PM -0400, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 23:14:16 -0400, Tyro[17] <ridimz yahoo.com> wrote:
 

The site is not active at the moment... I wasted my entire month's
bandwidth allocation allocation in six days trying to properly
configure a server on the VPN had to move that part of my learning
to a local box.


 
 I think you need to find another hosting company...
 
 At this point, you don't need concurrency, you need freedom of
 bandwidth and hard drive space.


[...]

Yeah, I don't know what your budget is, but I personally use
johncompanies.com for their Linux VPS (virtual private server). Tell
them you contribute to open source projects (namely, D), and you'll get
a discount. Because it's not an actual physical server, but a virtual
server running on shared server clusters, it has pretty good bandwidth /
disk space for the price, with triple T3 redundant 'Net connection (i.e.
minimal downtime), and you get root access and can configure everything
to your heart's content. Tech support is also excellent; you get direct
access to the admins maintaining the servers, no nonsense with bouncing
around poorly-trained question card readers. They're quite willing to
hand-hold paying customers through the process of setting things up, and
you can ask them to do periodic backups of important files/directories.
Highly recommended if your budget allows.


T

-- 
Любишь кататься - люби и саночки возить.
Jun 18 2013
parent "Tyro[17]" <ridimz yahoo.com> writes:
On 6/19/13 12:53 AM, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 11:55:19PM -0400, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 23:14:16 -0400, Tyro[17] <ridimz yahoo.com> wrote:


 The site is not active at the moment... I wasted my entire month's
 bandwidth allocation allocation in six days trying to properly
 configure a server on the VPN had to move that part of my learning
 to a local box.


 I think you need to find another hosting company...

 At this point, you don't need concurrency, you need freedom of
 bandwidth and hard drive space.


 [...]

 Yeah, I don't know what your budget is, but I personally use
 johncompanies.com for their Linux VPS (virtual private server). Tell
 them you contribute to open source projects (namely, D), and you'll get
 a discount. Because it's not an actual physical server, but a virtual
 server running on shared server clusters, it has pretty good bandwidth /
 disk space for the price, with triple T3 redundant 'Net connection (i.e.
 minimal downtime), and you get root access and can configure everything
 to your heart's content. Tech support is also excellent; you get direct
 access to the admins maintaining the servers, no nonsense with bouncing
 around poorly-trained question card readers. They're quite willing to
 hand-hold paying customers through the process of setting things up, and
 you can ask them to do periodic backups of important files/directories.
 Highly recommended if your budget allows.


 T


I miss typed in my earlier post I have a VPS running Ubuntu 13.04. I 
exhausted my local bandwidth. I will be taking a look at 
johncompanies.com though. Thanks for the info.

-- 

Andrew Edwards
--------------------
http://www.akeron.co
auto getAddress() {
     string location = " ", period = ".";
     return ("info" ~ location ~ "afidem" ~ period ~ "org");
}
Jun 20 2013
prev sibling parent Sean Kelly <sean invisibleduck.org> writes:
On Jun 18, 2013, at 8:55 PM, Steven Schveighoffer <schveiguy yahoo.com> =
wrote:


 On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 23:14:16 -0400, Tyro[17] <ridimz yahoo.com> wrote:
=20

 The site is not active at the moment... I wasted my entire month's =




bandwidth allocation allocation in six days trying to properly configure =
a server on the VPN had to move that part of my learning to a local box.

=20
 I think you need to find another hosting company=85


I had thought that maybe he was talking about a bandwidth limitation =
imposed by where he works/lives.  Either way, I'd work on finding a =
hosting service that has turn-key web support.  You could get things =
rolling with a blog-style front page (Wordpress, for example) backed by =
a wiki for the tutorial content.=
Jun 19 2013
prev sibling parent reply "Tyro[17]" <ridimz yahoo.com> writes:
On 6/18/13 6:09 PM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:

 Hi all,

 I understand that Andrew Edwards declined to have his talk recorded, and the
 slides have not been uploaded either.  So, what was it actually about?  The
 abstract is ... not exactly informative. :-P

 Thanks & best wishes,

      -- Joe


I decided not to record my talk which, in hindsight may not have been my 
best decision. That shouldn't have prevented the release of the slides 
but after reviewing the slides I came to the conclusion that the message 
was lost without the actual talk so I also decided against releasing them.

Steven did a great job explaining the gist of the talk (thanks) but I'll 
expand a little:

I've been in the military and D Programming communities for quite some 
time and during the presentation I tried to convey to the audience the 
situations that lead to me joining both; basically frustration that led 
to as search for better. When I stumbled across D I was just cutting my 
teeth on source code and in many ways I still am. While I have a grasp 
of the basics, I am at a lost when it comes to stringing them together 
to develop a system of any kind. Most of what I know I've learned 
lurking around the D forums and trying to read D out of Java and C++ 
programming books. Since I've resisted actually trying to learn those 
languages however, I haven't learned too much.

Though I cannot program, I have tried to support the community in every 
way I possibly can. Spreading the word was something simple so I tried 
to do that whenever and wherever I got the opportunity. I attempted to 
talk to a number of authors to have them look into the language and 
write books about it but got very few. Those that I did receive were not 
very positive. With the exception of two authors who, while they could 
not assist, began to make mention of the language in their newsletters 
and articles: one even went on to teach one of his courses using D (a 
big thank you to Chuck Allison who continues to be a fervent supporter 
of the language even today).

There are a couple observations that have remained constant over the 
past eleven years I've been lurking here in D land: 1) The documentation 
is seriously lacking 2) There are few tutorials (and those that exist 
suffer from code rot) 3) The language continues to evolve so people are 
unwilling to develop tools for it 4) Most projects that get started are 
quickly abandoned 5) People outside the community do not give it a fare 
shake 6) There is no IDE 7) No built in GUI library 8) Most people 
complain about what's not available instead of lending a hand to fix it.

One would think that after eleven years, I would have mastered the 
language by now. Not so because my day job doesn't allow for it. I start 
early in the days (up by 4AM) and end late at night (depart work about 
9PM) so the little time is get to pursue programming is next to 
nonexistent and very precious. Needless to say, when I do find that 
time, I would like to pick up a book written about programming in D 
rather than trying to translate, in my head, books written for other 
languages to D. No books? Maybe some tutorials would help... wait, they 
don't exist either.

I'm not going to be like the people that fall under category 8. To me 
it's one of two simple choices, either I contribute or shut up. At this 
point though, I am tired of just shutting up and waiting for the 
condition to change. Since I'm about to transition to civilian life, 
what would be better than trying to help ensure the future of something 
I care deeply about? I took a look at the list and decided that there 
were only to places I can help out: I could help create tutorials (in a 
severely limited capacity) and continue spreading the word about the 
benefits of switching to D.

I have no problem with spreading the word and, in fact, have been doing 
it since I stumbled upon the language. But I want to do more. I want to 
code and actually help improve the language. In order for that to happen 
though I need situations 1 or 2 to be improved. So I decided to launch 
dtutor.org.

But the decision was the easy part. I won't be finished with my current 
job until summer 2014 so I have very little time. I have very little 
programming experience, and thus would be at a lost to try to prepare 
content by myself. Though I've assembled, repaired and trouble shot 
computers issues for 20+ years, I've never ran a server before so that 
presents a challenge in itself. The technology I've decided to use to 
build the site is written in Python (of which I know nothing) which 
presents quite an obstacle to get it ported to D. I've never design or 
participate in the design of a website before so will have to learn that.

Yeah, its pretty clear that I have bitten off a lot more than I can 
chew... but to me it is better than complaining about the situation and 
not doing anything to help. The rest of the talk was about other areas 
of interest I have including Natural Language Processing and Logistics 
Management Systems. In the big scheme of things they are significant for 
my future business goals but not so much for D. Though I do hope to be 
the proud employer of D programmers in the future.

My hope is that I can obtain some help in bringing dtutor.org to life so 
that people like me can have a resource to turn to when they need 
guidance and the nay-Sayers will have one less thing to talk about.

-- 

Andrew Edwards
--------------------
http://www.akeron.co
auto getAddress() {
     string location = " ", period = ".";
     return ("info" ~ location ~ "afidem" ~ period ~ "org");
}
Jun 18 2013
next sibling parent "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh quickfur.ath.cx> writes:
On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 09:47:37PM -0400, Tyro[17] wrote:
[...]

 There are a couple observations that have remained constant over the
 past eleven years I've been lurking here in D land: 1) The
 documentation is seriously lacking 2) There are few tutorials (and
 those that exist suffer from code rot) 3) The language continues to
 evolve so people are unwilling to develop tools for it 4) Most
 projects that get started are quickly abandoned 5) People outside
 the community do not give it a fare shake 6) There is no IDE 7) No
 built in GUI library 8) Most people complain about what's not
 available instead of lending a hand to fix it.


[...]

 I'm not going to be like the people that fall under category 8. To
 me it's one of two simple choices, either I contribute or shut up.


+1! I've also noticed many of the above points of lack, though in my
case I had the benefit of being a programmer by trade, so they presented
far less an obstacle to me than they must have for you. Early on I also
decided that I refuse to be part of category 8 -- since I have (at least
some of!) the skills to improve the situation, I'd much rather do that
than to have my complaints fall on deaf ears.

My biggest regret is my lack of spare time to work on D... but with what
little time I do have, I've tried my best to contribute code and
documentation fixes. While I feel like I could be doing more, at least
I've done *something* about the situation, and I hope many others would
do the same. Many small contributions from a large number of people
ultimately would surpass a small number of big contributions from a
small group of core people.


[...]

 I have no problem with spreading the word and, in fact, have been
 doing it since I stumbled upon the language. But I want to do more.
 I want to code and actually help improve the language. In order for
 that to happen though I need situations 1 or 2 to be improved. So I
 decided to launch dtutor.org.


A most admirable goal!



 But the decision was the easy part. I won't be finished with my
 current job until summer 2014 so I have very little time. I have
 very little programming experience, and thus would be at a lost to
 try to prepare content by myself. Though I've assembled, repaired
 and trouble shot computers issues for 20+ years, I've never ran a
 server before so that presents a challenge in itself. The technology
 I've decided to use to build the site is written in Python (of which
 I know nothing) which presents quite an obstacle to get it ported to
 D. I've never design or participate in the design of a website
 before so will have to learn that.


Actually, one very valuable role you could fill is that of a reviewer
for prospective tutorials. I find that many doc writers (and I include
myself in that category) have difficulty explaining things to total
newbies, because we're just already so familiar with everything that we
unconsciously make assumptions that newbies have no clue about. Having
somebody who isn't a D expert review the docs and tutorials would help
greatly in identifying areas that could use some clarification /
rewording to be more newbie-accessible.



 Yeah, its pretty clear that I have bitten off a lot more than I can
 chew... but to me it is better than complaining about the situation
 and not doing anything to help. The rest of the talk was about other
 areas of interest I have including Natural Language Processing and
 Logistics Management Systems. In the big scheme of things they are
 significant for my future business goals but not so much for D.
 Though I do hope to be the proud employer of D programmers in the
 future.


If I could find a D programming job, it would be a dream come true!!



 My hope is that I can obtain some help in bringing dtutor.org to
 life so that people like me can have a resource to turn to when they
 need guidance and the nay-Sayers will have one less thing to talk
 about.


[...]

+1.


T

-- 
Today's society is one of specialization: as you grow, you learn more and more
about less and less. Eventually, you know everything about nothing.
Jun 18 2013
prev sibling next sibling parent "MattCoder" <mattcoder hotmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 19 June 2013 at 01:47:37 UTC, Tyro[17] wrote:

 My hope is that I can obtain some help in bringing dtutor.org 
 to life so that people like me can have a resource to turn to 
 when they need guidance and the nay-Sayers will have one less 
 thing to talk about.


Awesome story and if you strive as you did to help dconf, you 
will achieve your goals.

Good luck.
Jun 18 2013
prev sibling parent reply Joseph Rushton Wakeling <joseph.wakeling webdrake.net> writes:
Andrew -- thanks for the detailed explanation.  I have to say that I'm extremely
impressed by this kind of dedication to D given the long term constraints you've
experienced in being able to use it for yourself.

When you _do_ get the time, I can assure you that you will have huge amounts of
fun mastering D -- something that I don't doubt you will achieve.

I'm sorry to hear about your troubles with dtutor.org.  That said if you want to
speed things up there are a number of things I think you could consider.

The first would be to build the first generation of the site using a more
standard CMS of some kind -- MediaWiki springs to mind.  You could even as a
first iteration have dtutor.org forward to a location on wiki.dlang.org (e.g.
the already-existing wiki.dlang.org/Tutorials) to avoid the hosting issues.
Alternatively you could at first maintain tutorials on GitHub using Ddoc or some
other markup.

I know full well that this would be much less than you want -- it would lack all
the interactive features that you're looking to develop, and doesn't offer you
the learning opportunities of developing a site in D -- but it does get you to
the point of being already able to solicit and maintain tutorials which could
later be extended to work with the second, fully-functional version of the site.

Basically, don't let perfect be the enemy of good -- biting off more than you
can chew doesn't stop you returning it to the plate and slicing it up into
smaller pieces!

I don't really feel confident offering you help with the development of the site
itself -- I'm not experienced with web development and in the short term I'm not
in a position to correct that -- but I'll happily contribute some writing :-)

Best wishes,

    -- Joe
Jun 19 2013
parent "Tyro[17]" <ridimz yahoo.com> writes:
On 6/19/13 6:56 AM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:

 Andrew -- thanks for the detailed explanation.  I have to say that I'm
extremely
 impressed by this kind of dedication to D given the long term constraints
you've
 experienced in being able to use it for yourself.


Not a problem. When I find something that I believe worthy of my 
attention, I am not against putting in the time. Just wish I had more of 
it. But then again... don't we all?


 When you _do_ get the time, I can assure you that you will have huge amounts of
 fun mastering D -- something that I don't doubt you will achieve.


Something I look forward to dearly.


 I'm sorry to hear about your troubles with dtutor.org.  That said if you want
to
 speed things up there are a number of things I think you could consider.


Minor setback. It mostly have to do with timing. As it stands the server 
is back online. I still need to finish the configurations but at least 
there is a static "under construction" page now.


 The first would be to build the first generation of the site using a more
 standard CMS of some kind -- MediaWiki springs to mind.  You could even as a
 first iteration have dtutor.org forward to a location on wiki.dlang.org (e.g.
 the already-existing wiki.dlang.org/Tutorials) to avoid the hosting issues.
 Alternatively you could at first maintain tutorials on GitHub using Ddoc or
some
 other markup.


I'll be taking a look at vibelog soon for use as the interim solution.


 I know full well that this would be much less than you want -- it would lack
all
 the interactive features that you're looking to develop, and doesn't offer you
 the learning opportunities of developing a site in D -- but it does get you to
 the point of being already able to solicit and maintain tutorials which could
 later be extended to work with the second, fully-functional version of the
site.


Point taken. I should be ready to start soliciting tutorials within the 
next week or two at the most.


 Basically, don't let perfect be the enemy of good -- biting off more than you
 can chew doesn't stop you returning it to the plate and slicing it up into
 smaller pieces!

 I don't really feel confident offering you help with the development of the
site
 itself -- I'm not experienced with web development and in the short term I'm
not
 in a position to correct that -- but I'll happily contribute some writing :-)


Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.


 Best wishes,

      -- Joe


Thanks,
-- 

Andrew Edwards
--------------------
http://www.akeron.co
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Jun 20 2013