Every once in a while, knowing the caliber of this community, I am tempted to post non-arc programming/technology questions/ideas on this forum, but I know it's not the right thing to do - so I don't.
If I were to host a similar forum to this one for the arc community would you use it? find it useful? Is it worth my time?
If you did really want to ask a more personal question, those don't work on Hacker News very well anymore. They're probably against the secret rules of this forum, but if you don't have a better place to ask your question than here maybe you should just go ahead and ask.
Note however, that if you think you could actually go out and start a successful social news site of any sort, programming or non-programming, you might consider applying to Y Combinator. There is still room for a lot more Reddits out there.
Starting a new social news site is really hard though. It's much more of a marketing challenge than anything else.
HN: Too crowded, too fast. I can't remember users from one day to the next. Getting down-voted for slightly different etiquette that breaks 'secret rules' sux.
-Note however, that if you think you could actually go out and start a successful social news site of any sort, programming or non-programming, you might consider applying to Y Combinator.
I've been working something, different, for about 6 months, hackin on weekends evenings. I don't want to quit my job - I like my job. I get paid quite well so funding isn't something I think about. I'm happy tinkering along until I get my vision down pat. 50%-60% complete, but the remainder will take about 6 months for me (dependant upon how much I golf this year). Golf is more important than you might think! :)
-Starting a new social news site is really hard though. It's much more of a marketing challenge than anything else.
This is something I've been secretly hoping for for quite a while. I mostly lurk around here, only occasionally having something to say, and that's because I like Arc but I don't use it. I make small experimental hacks, and I like pursuing language design toward a minimalistic, timeless goal which is as open to the programmer as possible... but I hack in Groovy, and the language concepts I think about are not well-suited to Arc (albeit even less well-suited to Groovy ^_^ ).
I haven't started any threads here yet. Until I have something immediate to contribute to Arc, I don't feel like I should, since I'd be distracting from the topic of Arc itself, a topic that's obscure enough as it is. If there were another place with a topic of "Experiments in Programming Languages" or something to that effect, I'd feel a lot more at home.
There's Lambda the Ultimate (lambda-the-ultimate.org). That's not so much for experiments in programming as it is for PL theory discussion - fairly heavy on the academics, but very good.
Oh yeah, Lambda the Ultimate. I've read a few threads there, and I should probably check it out more often, since I can learn a lot very quickly that way.
But yeah, it's not a place programmers come to talk about random general-purpose snippets of code they've made, the way this is. I'm sure there are lots of sites like that too, but I guess I like the balance between that and PL design which this community seems to pursue. ^^
If you have something that you think might be interesting, just post it. The votes / comments will tell you whether it was a good idea better than a poll.
It's a little bit chicken-and-egg ... I'll decide once I see who's already there :)
I would guess that a new, more general, forum needs more than some fraction ( x < 1 ) of arc forum users in order to be engaging or useful ... are there other communities you will also attract some seed population from?
Do you want to give an example of the kinds of topics you have in mind?
hmmm.... idealistically I had hoped that doing this might grow the arc community, provide more things for the same community to engage in.
are there other communities you will also attract some seed population from
I think so, if I re-tool the forum well enough that conceptual domains are not all over the place, that could happen.
Do you want to give an example of the kinds of topics you have in mind?
yup.
* Right now I proxy from apache to my arc server. I was
reading about the Nginx webserver and wanted to know if
anyone had proxied from Nginx to Arc and could 'dicuss'
the worth-it/not-worth-it setup&configs of it. Nginx docs
are bad and most blogs only discuss integration with
mainstream technologies. Really this is a side topic not
truly arc related.
* I was reading about 'coffee script' and want to know
if anyone has used it. I was thinking of writing a
arc->coffe-script tool, but I would like to post
questions on it first.
I think that running Nginx as a frontend to Arc is relevant since there may be issues related specifically with the interaction between the two. Of course there might not be, but how would you know until you got into it? For example I'm running Perlbal as a frontend to Arc, and it gets messed up when Arc send a response without carriage returns in the headers but has a carriage returns in the beginning of the body. That's something that it's unlikely that anyone else is going to run into.
And if you're thinking of a Arc -> coffee-script tool, who knows, there might be some things that even if coffee-script is cool in general, might be unusual or problematic in the context of Arc.
I suppose "talk about anything as long as you include an obligatory Arc reference" might be going too far :-) but I suspect the line is further out than you've drawn it ^_^
I'd go farther - it doesn't even have to include an obligatory arc reference. The number of users here is small enough that the usual rules are less important. Especially if it's occasional (the front page is still mostly arc) and from someone we recognize, I think the handful of people here prob won't mind (or they'll respond to this if they do ;)
I'm finding out that creating a new destination site is crazy hard to do. The internet is mature; all of us have our habits, and it takes a lot to change. Just go where your audience is. If they don't like what you say they'll let you know, and you can then iterate.
hmmm. Good point. I suppose if no one replies to my 'other' items here, then a side forum probably would not work anyhow. And if I don't get replies to most of them - I'll probably get the hint (at least one would hope)... :)
At this point, I think that more posts is probably a good thing, even if they're only slightly related to arc.
A lot of people like me probably don't check all that often because there isn't much going on. If we can increase the number of comments/submissions to a slightly higher level, it will probably encourage more return visits, and better community interaction. Sure, the quality should be kept high and this is the arc forum. But by all means, submit "other" posts, if only so that there's a reason to check more frequently. That would give the arc community a greater appearance of life, and allow the posts and questions that "really matter" to get more attention as well.
If a quiet little alternate web site similar to the old Hacker News was to appear, I would use it and find it useful. I can't speak to whether or not that would be worth your time :-)
