[Gd-hackers] Why and how I use both paste.lisp.org and the wiki

[Peter Robisch]

== Ways to promote Dylan ==

Here I describe my thoughts of promoting Dylan:
     "Publish a Dylan book directed to students of Computer Science" 
could be a way.



*  My contribution to the wiki are motivated by this goal. 
        -  I believe that the outline of the wiki can be a good base 
           for a new Dylan book
        -  I don't believe that the content of the wiki will 
           ever have a ready-to-print quality. 
        -  I have the hope that at one day the wiki contains
           enough content that it is easy for several Open Dylan 
           Community members to join to write the book
         -  Attached to the end of this mail you will a section 
           "Outlining a Dylan Book Project"
*  This also means
        -  I'm not interest to do earlier drafts inside the wiki. 
           Under an earlier drafting I understand to write down a 
           sudden inspiration.

Other ideas which to not relate to the book idea in mind, I paste to
the #dylan channel via paste.lisp.org. 
For example, I started the following pastes.


*   Paste number 54106: Recommend web site updates
    http://paste.lisp.org/display/54106 
    
    related to web presentation of the Open Dylan Community


  * Paste number 54932: CDAN proposals
    http://paste.lisp.org/display/54932

related to the idea of the Open Dylan Community to
come up with a CDAN
            (CDAN Comprehensive Dylan Network Archive)
    'CDAN proposals' focus is to discuss the structure of 
    the CDAN and how the structure is mapped to
    repositories.

Related to the topic CDAN is the topic Build Mangement 
And now we additionally open this, which is titled

 *  Paste number 55261: Discussing ODC's Build Management
    http://paste.lisp.org/display/55261

    related to Open Dylan Community's  Build Management


Via the paste the sudden inspirations are published to the active community.


        -  Each active community member can ignore or comment the
           sudden inspiration. 
        -  If each sudden inspiration would go to the wiki the 
           quality of the wiki's content would decrease IMHO.
        -  A sudden inspiration can be turned into an activity by 
           any member of the Open Dylan Community. It can be turn 
           into an activity of every type: 
             -- proposal (A proposal corner in the wiki would be great), 
             -- do an admin-job 
               ( base, for example, on the 'recommend website updates'
                 of http://paste.lisp.org/display/54106 
             -- whatever.

As soon as a sudden inspiration turns into an activity it might be useful to
open a related wiki page. 
  Everyone who likes one of my sudden inspiration can turn it wiki page, if
he thinks commenting on it becomes easier that way. Of course I myself can
do that but I typically wait until my sudden inspiration of one category
have reached a critical mass.

   Also everyone, who feels that a sudden inspiration is better discussed on
comp.lang.dylan, can easily transfer a paste to the newsgroup. I think the
quality of  an sudden inspiration raises, if it is commented by another
active member and publish to comp.lang.dylan. 

Let me come up eith another way to promote Dylan
     ** Present Quality **

( To be honest that I derived from the work of Peter Housel. )
This also means
    -- I'm trying to fill the wiki with content of a good quality.
    -- I'm currently not interest to bring the wiki to a broader
       publicity as the wiki itsself is a mess IMHO. 
       (The wiki todo list is to long and the reported bugs are 
        too annoying. So I believe it is better to wait, until it 
        is based on the Monday parser. 
        I'm sure many bugs will be gone then.) 
    --  I' highly interest to improve the quality of the community
processes. 

Typically my first step is to publish a "sudden inspuirations" and the
second step to turn it into an activity.
(Often when I start an acitvity, another storm of sudden inspirations comes
up. Yes, I know that's sometimes also interfere with efficiently completing
a task. But it helps me well in working effectively on my main goal in
mind.)

Pet-ro

(Peter Robisch)


I mentioned above that I will attach a section  
   ** Outlining a Dylan Book Project **
Here it is:

== Outlining a Dylan Boob Project ==
== Book ==
Title: Working with actions and object 
Introducing the functional and object-oriented paradigma via Dylan
== Audiance ==
The book has two audiance. One is obviously based on the subtitle:
* students of computer science and any programmer interested in looking on
programming via paradigmas.
For these readers we provide insights into the programming language with the
following goals:
* an overview of programming language features. 
* an introduction on how these features related to design patterns
* an introduction on how these feature influence the implementation of
components
It is central for us to present programming languge features based on two
paradigma perspectives: 
* the object-oriented paradigma perspective and
* the action-oriented paradigm perspective. (The action- oriented paradigma
is often also termed as functional programming paradigma.)
Several language feature can be interpreted in the light of both paradigmas
( for example mixin classes). Other language feature are better explained by
giving up the object- oriented and action-oriented perspective and turn to
other perspective, e.g. the general abstraction paradigma of programming.
Related to abstraction paradigma are language concepts like encapsulation,
information hiding, interfaces and protocols.
A language that support both paradigmas well is Dylan. 
Dylan once designed at the early ninties to target towards the mainstream
language C++ lost attention during the Java hype. As this book will show
Dylan is well-design to support the two paradigmas.
As the living languages in the world programming languages evolute over
time, too. So we think there is a second audiance for this book: the Dylan
Community.
For the Dylan community this book will present.
* links to academic publications which introduce background knowledge for
current language features 
and inspiration to new language and implementation feature.
Currently the clear trend is to not only provide a programming language, but
also a workplace. As the pair Java and Eclipse demonstrate. It would be nice
if in parallel to a new Dylan book a new refractored IDE exists.