RE: Back to svg-developers

Hi Domenico,

 

I agree that there was a spirit at svg-developers that was exciting and brought a sense of community. I think that as SVG has blended with other technologies like CSS and D3, many of its people have scattered. SVG is now everywhere, so many users of it, under the hood, don’t even know it is there.

 

Concerning Pittsburgh, it is a place, that growing up in the Rocky Mountain west spoke to me of smoke and soot and steel. Well, most of that has moved elsewhere, but in the wake of the endowments from the Carnegies, Mellons, Sloans and the like has been left a strong economic infrastructure, largely centered around the fine institutions of higher learning there. Google Pittsburgh opened in 2007 I think and relying on the steady stream of graduates from Carnegie Mellon and Pitt’s fine CS programs, Disney Research, Yahoo, Microsoft, Oracle, Apple have joined Google and Intel in opening offices in the academic part of town and may join Google as a powerhouses for the city’s growing hi-tech presence. Yeah, all cities claim that but not all cities have an MIT, a Stanford or a Carnegie Mellon with strong footing in the history of AI as well as a strong entrepreneurial spirit.  

 

And owing to endowments from the heyday of its steel wealth, Pittsburgh’s art scene is thriving as well!

 

The downtown is vibrant and appealing!

I like the idea of sponsors contributing to an art event. We’ve already been moving in that direction including it in the specs being sent to possible venues, though it is too early to say exactly how. Suffice it to say that we are thinking such thoughts.

 

I think it would be fun to convince our friends at Mozilla and Opera to open offices there!

 

The Ello link works from my email client (Outlook), but of course that was where it was generated. Maybe if it is all on one line:

http://www.zdnet.com/will-new-social-network-ello-finally-topple-facebooks-dominance-7000034161/

 

I loved your critique of StackOverflow. I still subscribe to  [email protected] and should unsubscribe soon. The ethno-centric and gender-centric bias, hostility and holier than thou attitude by some of its self-appointed czars is reminiscent of something I read recently about a culture of chauvinism within the Linux development world. It or at least gender-fueled arrogance certainly seemed present in the HTML5 spec development of 2007-08 .

 

Jacob Beard was the very same fellow who, without trying, was able to persuade me that just maybe Twitter was worth paying attention to. Hi Jacob!

 

Cheers and regards

David

 

 

 

 

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2014 1:43 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [svg-developers] Back to svg-developers

 

  

Hi David, 

Thanks for taking the time to put down a list of the available resources (the link about Ello seems to be broken). I honestly believe that none of those has quite the same mission as svg-developers. It’s easy to make a new list and then say “Hey guys, let’s move over to this other list”. But can they recreate the spirit?

I love when you say things like ” enjoying (or enduring) unanticipated enthusiasm” :). You know, back in time in old English gentlemen’s clubs you could be deported (or worse) for tweeting. Do you really think that’s the type of enthusiasm you need for Pittsburgh? I wouldn’t count too much on that. Instead, given that Pittsburgh might not be considered fascinating enough to take a trip there, I would suggest that you create attractions. Hold it! Not in the city itself, I mean things like competitions. For example ask Microsoft or Adobe (if they’re still sponsors) to pay a $1,000 prize for this: put up a wide screen showing the connected computers of the participants to the competition while they code a Bezier in fifteen minutes, blindfold (I mean without checking with the browser. Put pressure). The code from each machine could be broadcasted live to the panel, and shown to the audience only. Then have a winner for the most artistic realization, and one for the most complex. Of course you would announce the theme right before the competition, to prevent participants from doing their woodshedding.

If you google “SVG forums”, in sixth position, after some irrelevant or proprietary lists (except for stackoverflow), you still get svg-developers.

Since we’re talking stackoverflow, take a look at this:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4075741/best-community-for-svg-developers 

I’m reporting it here with its off-topic notice ‘cause it’s too beautiful:

THE QUESTION

“
I am conscious of the fact that members may not take kindly to my question here but I am really struggling with finding a community devoted to all things SVG. There are all kinds of places and forums for JS, RoR, PHP and now the buzz with HTML5 canvas but where is the love for SVG?

I have read some insightful responses from STackoverflow members like 'Echoflow' & 'Erik Dahlström' on few things SVG but Im hoping to discover a wider community as well. Any guidance?
“

THE NOTICE

closed as off-topic by Stijn, Danield, rene, HamZa, Unihedron Sep 10 at 8:44

This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:

"Questions asking us to recommend or find a book, tool, software library, tutorial or other off-site resource are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it." – Stijn, Danield, rene, HamZa, Unihedron

If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.

 

Wow, that’s spine-chilling, drones Stijn, Danield, rene, HamZa, Unihedron were not designed to satisfy that kind of request. Are we supposed to raise our right arm at 135 degrees (0 being at rest) as a salute? No, seriously, give me a break, that kind of sectarian attitude is a thing of the past, taking oneself too seriously as a “coding expert” (worse is the committees who prepare those charts). I’m not afraid to state here that over 50% or responses on stack overflow is trash. Maybe it’s about time to trash the drones too–no no, do not recycle– and please, let’s not make new models. 

 

There’s more: 

- “off-topic”, off of which topic?

- “opinionated answers”, does this imply that non opinionated answers are correct by default? Or that opinionated answers are not correct, or suspicious, by default? Do they believe non opinionated answers are any more credible? Do they realize that the answers by experts are indeed very often opinionated, or at least, subjective? BTW, how else?

 

And who are those who give non opinionated answers, aren’t they the same who spend the clearest of their time producing bugs? (“If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.”,  <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra> Edsger W. Dijkstra).

 

Luckily, Jacob Beard baldly takes his chance and gives an opinionated answer by pointing to this list.

 

Domenico