On Monday, 6 October 2025 at 11:48:57 UTC, Dennis wrote:
Sometimes people ask Walter for tasks to work on. After hearing
the tasks he gives, the enthusiasm quickly dies down. For
example, apparently no one wants to write an [80 bit floating
point
emulator](https://forum.dlang.org/post/[email protected]).
Alright I have no idea what an 80 bit floating point emulator is
or why it's useful but if you can point me in the direction to
making one I can try, I guess.
Many attempts have been made to organize priority issues and
motivate new contributors, including:
- Bi-annual [vision
statements](https://wiki.dlang.org/Category:Vision_Statements)
- DMD strike teams on Slack
- Bug bounty program on Flipcause
- Quarterly Bugzilla rewarding cycle
- Ucora's IVY program
- #dbugfix campaign
While they have resulted in positive effects, they weren't very
successful. That doesn't mean the ideas are unsound, they could
have just been executed poorly. But it goes to show: it's not
as simple as just raising the idea "have a vision document" or
"direct the community to work on specific issues". Unless you
can give a specific implementation of those ideas with a track
record of success, I don't expect it to go any differently than
previous attempts unfortunately.
I suppose you're right, but even if past attempts haven't been as
successful we should at least keep trying, IMO.
And AFAIK there already were complaints about debugging in
DMD, to the point that they're even on the GitHub for the
compiler IIRC.
It's good that you raise awareness for issues like this, but
it's even better if you include links to the GitHub issues
whenever they come up.
[Here, there's a whole list of things that I'm talking
about.](https://github.com/dlang/vision-document/blob/main/gripes-wishes-feedback.md#toolsecosystem)
