Re: Overcoming the "Dylan is Dead" belief?

On 11 September 2013 07:30, Francesco Ceccon <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Sep 10, 2013, at 15:35 , Bruce Mitchener wrote:
> > What can we do? What should we do?
>
>
Alright. Comments inline, and my thoughts follow. Don't take it entirely
too seriously, as I might be wrong… but there are questions and ideas
nonetheless.


> I think there are two course of action:
>
> 1. Rename the compiler to something else, so people won't  associate it
> with
>    Apple Dylan
> 2. Make a library/framework that people will actually use
>
> I think option 1 won't solve our problems because people will go from "I
> thought
> Apple killed Dylan" to "I din't know $new-compiler existed".
> Another point is that people, or at least me, associate Dylan with "the
> *cool*
> project Apple killed", so this might help us.
>

I'm unconvinced this will help much. Most people have no idea what Dylan
is. This is the default one should expect, and "Dylan" is a decent enough
name. Rather than convince the people who have heard about it in the past
that it's still alive and kicking, perhaps it's more prudent to aim for the
wider audience. Isn't "Here's a cool language that people write cool stuff
in, and guess what? If you look a little closer, it has tons of history." a
better sell than possibly confusing people about it's heritage by
misleading them to think it's entirely new?


>
> In my opinion, the biggest problem with Dylan at the moment is that there
> isn't
> a project that can attract new people, except for the compiler itself.
> If we make something that people will use for their weekend projects we
> might
> gain some traction or at least some recognition. If enough people build
> something
> with Dylan I can't see how someone can say that he thought Dylan was dead
> :)
>
> I think Bruce agrees with me because he started calvino for this reason,
> unfortunately the projects has stopped. A game engine is probably a good
> idea because, from what I can see, game engines in other languages require
> a lot of setup and learning too, so an aspiring gamedev would not be scared
> of learning a new language if this means he can have a nicer environment.
> For example some months ago I wrote some C# because I wanted to play with
> Unity 3D, if it wasn't for Unity I would have never looked at C#.
>
>
This bit I agree with for the most part, but I'm not entirely sure it
requires libraries and frameworks. My question would be "what are the
people on this mailing list currently using Dylan for and how can we all
help make it easier to do that in Dylan… so easy that doing it in another
language would be borderline idiotic?"

For pragmatic steps, how about a poll or a few notes on what people are
actually doing with Dylan? Hopefully, people who are interested in Dylan
might then see how they can help (even if they're not interested in
compiler hacking).

It might also help to step up the marketing somewhat. When you have a good
thing going, it doesn't hurt to show others how it might help them also…
and make it easy for them to get started. Examples: http://tryruby.org and
http://tryhaskell.org. If there's no objection, perhaps a website/branding
refresh somewhere down the line might also help (e.g http://scala-lang.orgvs.
http://opendylan.org). I realise this might seem like advertising spiel,
but it doesn't hurt to look alive (sorry, brucem).

As a last note, while Dylan has great docs, it wouldn't hurt to streamline
the process from landing on the site to being able to try it out
(packaging, installers… Homebrew). Some people will download a tarball and
peruse the README, but I regret to say, most won't. Let's make it
ridiculously easy for people to get started.


Fin.

This project could be something else, like getting DUIM is shape so it can
> be
> used to write multi-platform applications. Something likes Rails would be
> nice
> too, but IMHO harder because setting up a Rails (or Flask, or Django)
> application
> is really smooth so the bar is set very high.
>
>
> - Francesco
> _______________________________________________
> hackers mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.opendylan.org/mailman/listinfo/hackers
>



-- 

{art.science} http://micrypt.com

_______________________________________________
hackers mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.opendylan.org/mailman/listinfo/hackers