For example why Pike core developers are not on IRC ?
Good question. That would be easy enough to rememdy if there were any ppl developing/using pike that actaully use IRC. A lot of people here strongly prefer KOM for these sort of discussions, something I too preach. IRC is for idleing/wasting time.
OTOH - if there was a #pike somewhere, I'd probably be idleing there too.
/ Peter Lundqvist (disjunkt)
Previous text:
2003-04-25 00:51: Subject: Re: Sad.....
On Thu, 24 Apr 2003, Xavier Beaudouin wrote:
Everybody here may think about that. Not the fact that some good pike developper goes away, but the fact that the Pike Community (sic) is maybe (personnaly I am allmost sure) too mutch elitist maybe no soo opened as it claims to.
The thread about the Pike error was in my opinion a good example about a too mutch elitist point of view. Ok it is maybe the smartest errors message on earth but if you are a newbie (or even not so newbie...) it is very hard to understand them well. Nothing is perfect, you always have to make some compromises.
What is the main problem with Pike : too small community, too less documentation, too mutch skill is needed to join into it.
Why do I say that : I discovered Spinner in early 96.... I took 6 years to under some Pike coding and how to make some C modules.
I know Pike since 2 years now and I can't say it was hard to understand. The documentaion was enough at least for a basic usage, for writing C modules it was more difficult but since then there have been a good doc about that (thanks Andreas Finnman) and I got the help I needed on IRC.
Another reason why the community is small IMHO is the reinvent the wheel and not use what the other use behaviour. For example why Pike core developers are not on IRC ? Every new comer will look for an IRC channel, look at #caudium, #php, #python, #perl, #debian... IRC might sucks a lot compared to other things but be pragmatic, you will have more newbie on IRC. There are sometimes poeple asking pike only questions on #caudium. Same goes for SSL. Why not making a glue to OpenSSL and dropping the current SSL code, Parser.HTML|XML ?
Finally I want to say Pike is really a good language and lot of work has been put into it, thank to you. So it's not because I said this that I said everything/poeple are bad, I just say it can be a lot better with a few changes in the mind and without any lot of efforts.
-- David Gourdelier
/ Brevbäraren