[Gardeners] CL Gardeners: good news, bad news, how to win big

[Matthew D Swank]

Peter Seibel wrote:
> On Feb 22, 2006, at 12:39 PM, Peter Seibel wrote:
> 
> 
>>On Feb 22, 2006, at 12:19 PM, Paolo Amoroso wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I realize that my frankness may sound harsh.  I am aware that
>>>volunteer labor is a gift, and that Real Life takes its toll.  But I
>>>would like to understand why the CLD has received so little help, and
>>>whether this may have any implications for current and future
>>>gardeners projects.
>>
>>>Ideas and discussions are no longer enough.  Lisp needs labor, not
>>>praise.
>>
>>I agree with this last sentiment and appreciate Paolo's frankness.
>>I'm also interested in what we can do to enable more people to
>>contribute to tending the Common Lisp garden.
> 
> 
> I should also point out that there's a flip side to this, which is if  
> there's a project that you're championing (or even just interested  
> in) that nobody else is contributing to, it's worth a few polite  
> queries to the list asking if there are folks who might be interested  
> but are put off for one reason or another. Maybe there's something  
> about the way the project is defined or structured or whatever that  
> makes people less interested than they might otherwise be. If even  
> these queries go unanswered then you'll probably have to reconcile  
> yourself to doing more work on your own to get the project to a point  
> where it attracts other contributors or giving up on the project.
> 
> -Peter
> 

Well, my ambitions currently outstrip my Lisp skills, so I decided to 
shut up (for the most part) until I could put up.  No one's going to do 
large scale lightweight concurrency in common lisp (and let us look at 
the code) just because I think it's a neato idea.  It enough to make you 
switch to gambit scheme some days.

I'm motivated by producing (good) code.  If I produce something someday 
that isn't completely embarrassing, I'll make a contribution.  I suppose 
  that's not the ideal Gardener's mentality.

As a side note to the thrust of this discussion, I also find Cliki quite 
a bit more useful and usable than the CLD.  I suppose the CLD is a well 
meaning response to the reddit debacle, but I was more interested in 
reddit's threading problems in cmucl than in showing them up.

Matt

-- 
"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to 
your grandmother." — Albert Einstein.