On 5/5/14, 8:19 PM, Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
On 5 May 2014 14:09, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d
<digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
This is nice, but on the face of it it's just this: an idea on how other
people should do things on their free time. I'd have difficulty convincing
people they should work that way. The kind of ideas that I noticed are
successful are those that actually carry the work through and serve as good
examples to follow.
There's imperfect but useful pull requests hanging around for years,
extern(Obj-C) for instance, which may be useful as an experimental
feature to many users, even if it's not ready for inclusion in the
official feature list and support.
I suspect it's (experimental) presence would stimulate further
contribution towards D on iOS for instance; it may be an enabler for
other potential contributors.
So it would be nice if you reviewed that code.
What about AST macros? It seems to me that this is never going to be
explored and there are competing proposals, but I wonder if there's
room for experimental implementations that anyone in the community can
toy with?
There would be of course room as long as there's be one or more
champions for it. Would that be something you'd be interested in?
UDA's are super-useful, but they're still lacking the thing to really
set them off, which is the ability to introduce additional boilerplate
code at the site of the attribute.
Interesting. Have you worked on a related proposal?
I reckon there's a good chance that creating a proper platform for
experimental features would also have an advantage for community
building and increase contribution in general. If new contributors can
get in, have some fun, and start trying their ideas while also being
able to share them with the community for feedback without fear
they'll just be shot down and denied after all their work... are they
not more likely to actually make a contribution in the first place?
I'd say so, but we'd need initiative and quite a bit of work for such a
platform. Would you be interested?
Once they've made a single contribution of any sort, are they then
more likely to continue making other contributions in the future
(having now taken the time to acclimatise themselves with the
codebase)?
I agree - and that applies to you, too.
I personally feel the perceived unlikeliness of any experimental
contribution being accepted is a massive deterrence to making compiler
contributions in the first place by anyone other than the most serious
OSS advocates.
Contributions make it into the compiler and standard library if and they
are properly motivated, well done, and reviewed by the core team which
is literally self-appointed. The key to being on the core team is just
reviewing contributions. Have you considered looking at submissions that
are "hanging around for years"?
I have no prior experience with OSS, and it's certainly
a factor that's kept me at arms length.
It's as easy as just reviewing stuff. Acta, non verba.
Andrei
