On Monday, 24 December 2018 at 22:22:08 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer
wrote:
On 12/24/18 2:44 AM, Joakim wrote:
On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 22:36:05 UTC, Steven
Schveighoffer wrote:
Huh? It's their decision, not yours. Even if the decision has
no reason at all, it's still theirs. What is the problem?
Start your own D "conference competitor" if you think you can
do better.
They are accountable to the community, so the decision and its
reasons matter.
My impression is that the community likes and benefits from
these conferences, so everything's cool there.
The 0.1% of the community that attend seem to like it, the vast
majority don't, or at least don't care.
I, for one, will not be donating to the foundation as long as
they continue to waste money this way, just as others have
said they won't donate as long as it doesn't put out a Vision
document anymore or otherwise communicate what it's doing with
their money.
Nobody is asking for your money for this conference (unless you
want to attend), and if you feel this way, that's totally your
choice.
I'm not talking about the registration fee, I'm talking about
contributing anything to the foundation, which Walter indicates
above covers some of the expenses for DConf.
I like the results that come from the conferences, I've
been to all of them since 2013, on my dime for 3, and with
assistance for 3. I felt it was 100% worth it for all.
Yet you cannot give a single reason _why_ you felt it was worth
it, or why my suggestions wouldn't make it better.
Nobody cares to debate something that has already been
scheduled and planned, the time to bring up concerns was
earlier, when you brought it up before. But that failed to
convince, now it's decided, time to move on.
So you agree with me that there's no point in "debating" it
again, perhaps you should have addressed this comment to Mike
then?
Mike didn't start the debate in this thread, you did.
I did no such thing: I asked for the reasons _why_ the decision
was made, considering the previous debate. That is not restarting
the debate, simply asking for the rationale. Others then tried to
debate me again, and while I did respect them enough to engage
with their arguments, I repeatedly pointed out that I wasn't
looking to debate it again.
Consider how one feels when careful deliberation is made, and a
final decision, combined with an announcement is made. Would
you like to have people question your decisions AFTER they are
made, and commitments have already been established? The time
to question them is before they are made, not after.
Questioning after is simply viewed (rightly) as sour grapes.
You didn't get your way, move on.
If you're making a bad decision, it _should_ be questioned.
Almost nothing that has been decided so far would stop most of my
three suggestions from still being implemented.
As for how they feel about it, I don't care. The reason most
projects and companies fail is because the decision-making
process stops being about putting out a good product but about
"feelings" and various people "saving face," especially when
higher up the hierarchy, ie politics. And don't make up some
nonsense that I'm saying that it's okay if everybody starts
cursing each other out like Linus did: we're talking about
_questioning a decision_. That is the whole point of having a
community.
The day this community starts being more about saving face is the
day I leave it, as that's the beginning of the end, and I don't
want to be around for that end.
If it's such a great idea, that should be an easy case to
make, compared to the alternatives given. Yet all I get is a
bunch of stone-walling, suggesting no reasoning was actually
involved, just blindly aping others and the past.
It is easy, for those who have attended conferences and like
them -- they work well. All past dconfs are shining examples.
Just drop it and move on to something else. You lost the
battle for this one, it's no longer up for discussion.
Heh, there was no "battle," as most of those responding didn't
even understand what I wrote, like Iain above, gave no
arguments (we "like them -- they work well"), and as finally
clear from Mike and Walter's responses here, there was no real
deliberation on the matter.
You think they just flipped a coin one day, and didn't think
about any past experience at all? No real thinking must have
gone into it because only intelligent people can come to the
conclusion you reached, right? This kind of "debate" where the
assumption is that only my way is correct is common out there
these days, it's tiring.
Not at all, the whole reason I'm willing to debate is that other
worthwhile perspectives may be out there. I think the evidence
and arguments strongly favor the suggestions I'm putting forward,
but I'm perfectly willing to consider other arguments.
That is the same stance they should have, but don't appear to. My
problem with this "debate" is that nobody was able to defend the
current DConf format at all.
Consider some of Walter's silly arguments above: at one point he
says he wants "successful instantiations of your theories,"
implying that these are all things I'm just talking about and
nobody's doing them, though it's not clear which aspects he
thinks that of since I've presented evidence for much of it.
But at another point, he says that other D meetups are already
doing something I suggest (I pointed out that he's wrong about
that one, but let's assume he believes it), so there's no reason
for DConf to do it. First of all, 95+% of D meetups appear to
follow the DConf format of having a single speaker lecture to a
room, so why isn't that an argument against doing that yet again
at DConf?
Secondly and more importantly, he's speaking out of both sides of
his mouth: do you want to do something that nobody else's doing
or that somebody has done? You can't argue _both_ that you don't
want to do what others are doing and what nobody else is doing.
And why wouldn't the former apply much more to the outdated DConf
format?
The best thing you can do is start a competing conference style
and show how it works better. I'm sure Walter and Andrei would
not discourage more D conferences or conference-like gatherings.
This is unrealistic: D has limited resources, better to
restructure DConf itself. I have already offered to pitch in with
implementing my suggestions for DConf, in the linked forum thread
above.
Since they don't take DConf seriously, I see no reason to
either: I'll just start ignoring it from now on.
That's unfortunate, but not anything I can change.
It's not just because of this, this is merely the final straw. I
have felt that the talks were mostly not worth my time at the
last couple Dconfs, that is the main reason.
I see a lot of bait-and-switch going on, where the talks
advertise something interesting, then talk about something else.
There doesn't appear to be any attempt at quality control for the
content of the DConf talks, once the presenters have been
accepted. This is a problem for almost every conference, but it
only aggravates the huge waste of time that is in-person talks.
You have
contributed a lot in terms of the android port, although I
haven't really programmed in android (I have a tiny bit, with
Xamarin (hated it) and a bit with Java (was OK, but crazy
complicated) ). I hope at some point you reconsider, I'd love
to see a presentation on it.
See my responses to Nicholas above, I don't think the Android
port merits a talk. By the same standards I apply to others'
talks above, I don't think my work merits a talk either. ;)
