lack of contributors

[Waldemar Kornewald]

Brian Rice wrote:
> The core coders (Lee) left. THAT's the problem. I'm not blind to the  
> fact that the speed of Slate is a serious problem. Todd Fleming told  
> me himself that the disappointing speed of the UI disheartened him to  
> stop working on it.
> 
> The irony here is staggering. I just don't know what to do about it.  
> Bringing back Lee would have its own attendant problems - he's really  
> just not easy to work with.

If nothing else works, would you be able to add support for LLVM? You 
mentioned it a few times and it seemed to require architectural changes 
(SSA).

Lee seemed to be depressed because of lack of progress (not because he 
does not want to work on big projects). He made the impression that he 
did not want to work on the compiler any longer ("sigh...yet another 
2500 lines of code..."), so I had my doubts about his return. Maybe he 
coded too much and maybe you two were talking about too many "future" 
things on IRC instead of just coding the high-priority stuff before 
doing anything else.

Do you think that Lee would continue his work if you ask him politely? 
You don't have to "live" with him. Just code your stuff and stay away 
from IRC discussions (only help in case of real problems).

> So, if you want this to happen, help me make it happen. Do some work  
> to make site improvements or blurbs that will speak to the right  
> people. Be a language marketer. Someone has to do it.

I already tried to promote it. Most people shy away from complex syntax. 
That was the reason for my earlier mail suggesting to at least remove 
all this "@(... traits)" stuff and reduce the use of ugly chars like 
"#!@%$&`|".

> weekend. Calling someone an idiot just does not rate on my "human  
> interaction Richter scale".

Really, being called an idiot does not motivate people. What about 
instead of saying "you're an idiot" you say "sorry, I must continue with 
work"? That will end the discussion, too.

> be usable before I am drawing a pension. Everyone else sees Slate  
> from the outside-in; for me, I feel my life ticking away and it  
> becomes personal.

I have the feeling that I don't have to tell you that this has a bad 
impact on any project (frustration, where is the fun?, ...).

> So I want people to work intensely on it so that the project is not  
> filled with hundreds of half-done projects and nothing useful. I  

Well, what might be the reason for people running away, then? I think 
that the syntax plays a big role. Smalltalk is very verbose, for example 
(maybe this is good, though). There are too many rough edges. The ideas 
are cool, but Slate is not as easy to learn and use as it should be.

> I'm hard-pressed to find what I should do about it. That's why I  
> invite people to write tutorials covering it, because the manual is a  
> ***reference*** and not didactic at all. It cannot be my job to teach  
> people Slate, because I live in it and cannot get my mind out of that  
> perspective. I just CAN'T do it. Similarly, if I wrote tutorials, I  
> would have a harder time "swapping out" that information and  
> "swapping in" Slate internal code information.

I started collecting a pro/con list for every Slate feature and I will 
add suggestions on how to improve the situation. I'll post it to 
http://slate.infogami.com/ when it's finished.
I will also try to make an easy to understand "syntax" introduction 
without saying things like "unary messages have higher precedence 
than...". I'll try to make it as natural as possible, but it's really 
difficult with three types of messages...

Could the others please help me with this work? Why do you think is 
Slate cool? What are its issues? Where is room for improvement?
Please reply to this mail or go to http://slate.infogami.com/ and add 
your opinion.

> Honestly, though, if all this is hot air and you don't do anything  
> substantial about it, don't expect me to be pleasant to you.

You're again trying to push me and preparing to call me an idiot... ;)

Bye,
Waldemar