A new maintainer

[Bob Nystrom]

Hi everyone,

It's pretty obvious from the commit stream, issue tracker, open PRs, and mailing list that I haven't been active on Wren for some time. Like most things in life, the reasons are complex. Part of it is a simple matter of time. I've got a full-time job, wife, kids, dogs, cats. I'm 160k words into writing a book on interpreters. I have a couple of other open source projects to hack on. In theory, I also squeeze a little bit of fun and relaxation in there.

The larger issue is more personal. I have a decent amount of social anxiety, though I'm usually able to navigate it well enough that you wouldn't notice. As Wren got more successful (which is great!) I found myself in the weird position of finding it socially stressful to work on. None of this is your fault. Every single person who has taken an interest in Wren has been a total joy to work with. It's the thing I am most proud of about this little language and its ecosystem.

If anything, that makes it worse. Because I found myself constantly feeling like I was letting people down or leaving them hanging when I couldn't stay on top of PRs and issues. That stress encouraged me to procrastinate working on Wren, which of coursed caused a feedback loop making things worse. All of this sounds pretty dumb when I write it out, but that's what's been going on in my head.

A few weeks ago, Michel put a fine point on it by bringing up the question of forking. I've been telling myself eventually I would suck it up and claw my way back to the top of the pile of bugs and feature requests, but I think reality is trying to tell me something. What Wren actually needs is someone (or a team of someones) who can give it the time and care it needs to grow and flourish.

In other words, the best thing I can for Wren is to get myself off the critical path so I'm not holding it back. To that end, it's time for a new lead maintainer. I've talked to Sven Bergström who I'm confident is a great fit and he is up for it. The plan we have in mind is:

• Transfer the main Wren repo from my personal GitHub account over to a new "wren-lang" GitHub organization. This will move over all issues and PRs with it, so it shouldn't be disruptive.
  
  
• Give Sven admin privileges on the new GitHub organization, Wren repo, and mailing list. All the keys to the castle!
  
  
• At that point, I'm officially out of the way. Sven can land commits, resolve issues, etc. It's up to him to work with you all and figure out what kind of structure and processes will work best going forward.
  
  
• Meanwhile, I've got some thoughts and vague long-term ideas for Wren I've been kicking around in the back of my mind since forever. I'll try to write those down and send them out so that other people can think about them too.
  
  
• The only other piece of infrastructure is the website for Wren. It's hosted using GitHub Pages, so that part's easy. It will transfer over with the repo. I own the domain and I'm happy to keep paying to keep it registered for the foreseeable future.
  

This sounds like I intend to disappear in a puff of smoke, never to be seen again. That's not my plan. I do intend to keep commit privileges on the new repo and would like to still participate if I find the time or energy. My hope is that the new structure will relieve much of my anxiety. But the important part is that even if I don't, Wren can continue to grow and thrive.

Any big transition like this can seem scary or sad and I want to emphasize how positively excited I am about this change. When I was younger, I spent years trying to make music on my own. I always found it a frustrating, lonely experience. Then I started a band and everything got better. I made better music with them — we made better music — than I ever could have alone. This is exactly why I love open source — the code we produce is better together than any of us could create independently.

I'm really excited to see Wren grow in ways that I couldn't have predicted or invented thanks to all of you. This transition really isn't about subtracting me. If you look at the commit history lately, I've been at close to zero for some time. It's really about adding more of you all.

That's my thoughts, but, as always, I'd like to hear from you before it becomes the official plan. What do you think?

– bob

[Callum John]

If this speeds up development and, more importantly, makes you happier than you currently are, I say don't hesitate; do it.

[Michel Hermier]

Hi,

Nice to see things moving. I wish you good luck on your projects.

You'll have a definite consultative role for the project to my eyes.

And the fact that I made a fork doesn't mean I leave the project, just that I need to experiment stuff that might definitively not fit the main project ideas concerns.

So you'll still see me around monitoring Sven so he does not mess :p and contribute in one form or another to the language.

Cheers,

   Michel

[Bob Nystrom]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2018 at 11:28 AM Michel Hermier <michel....@gmail.com> wrote:

And the fact that I made a fork doesn't mean I leave the project, just that I need to experiment stuff that might definitively not fit the main project ideas concerns.

Yes, I should have clarified this. If anyone wants to fork Wren to take things in a different direction, that's always totally fine (though changing the name is a good idea to avoid confusion).

My main goal is to avoid needing to fork just to route around me. It's best for the community if there is a still a single, canonical "Wren" that people can use.

 

So you'll still see me around monitoring Sven so he does not mess :p and contribute in one form or another to the language.

Awesome! As always, thanks for everything you've done for Wren over the years. :)

– bob

[Mike Rubits]

I am excited to hear this, there is definitely nothing scary or sad from my perspective. I don't know where the ceiling is for Wren, but I have complete faith in Sven and Bob and whoever else decides to contribute their time to maintaining it to bring it there. Wren fills a niche that I've been looking for in games programming in a way none of the alternatives do, and it doesn't require me to get used to 1 indexed arrays :)

[Brian Slesinsky]

Sounds great to me. Best wishes!

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[Bob Nystrom]

OK, I've done the mechanical steps that I can:

• Sven is now an owner on the mailing list.
  
• I've created a GitHub organization for wren-lang.
  
• I transferred the wren repo from my account to wren-lang/wren.
  
• I invited Sven to join the organization. Once he accepts, I'll make him an admin.
  

Thank you, everyone, for being so supportive and understanding. This is a new experience for me, but I'm optimistic that Wren will grow and thrive in ways I couldn't have predicted now that I'm not at the helm.

Cheers!

– bob

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/wren-lang/CAP3gGgPEeohbi4PfTX3uVLoawxAr%2B-PmVrjka1-f6h0Sr2HWXQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Callum John]

That's excellent, but what about the website?

You mentioned that you would transfer the repo over for that, as well.

Does that mean that it will be open sourced alongside the virtual machine code?

[Sven Bergström]

The website is part of the repo already pretty sure!
It's in the branch called gh-pages (github pages). 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/wren-lang/c4cf1a54-216c-4a41-9625-adc7706054b1%40googlegroups.com.

[Bob Nystrom]

On Tue, Nov 20, 2018 at 12:45 PM Sven Bergström <sv...@underscorediscovery.com> wrote:

The website is part of the repo already pretty sure!
It's in the branch called gh-pages (github pages). 

That's right. The source for the website has always lived in the main Wren repository. It's here:

https://github.com/wren-lang/wren/tree/master/doc/site

Personally, I've always found the "gh-pages" branch mechanism really confusing and annoying. It looks like GitHub can now serve pages out of the master branch's "docs" directory. It might be worth moving some stuff around in the repo to get that going. That way it's easier to push doc changes.

Cheers!

– bob

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/wren-lang/CAOHyZoZuyTvTWPH_Diur-KMNCR_A1FUQ8m_-s5j7oi4Cv70f2A%40mail.gmail.com.

[Sven Bergström]

oh cool, I also found the gh-pages arcane and hard to find for most!
I think the docs/ makes a lot more sense. 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/wren-lang/CAMu6JH8cNh2JGN1S3hWK-cmty8k79TwpBToit8AtnDvpeO6oJA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Daniel Sperl]

I've just recently discovered Wren and instantly fell in love with its simplicity and concise elegance. You did a fantastic job and laid extremely solid foundations — I'm sure you're doing the right thing now by letting it fly on its own! 

Being the maintainer of an open source project myself, I totally understand what you mean by "socially stressful". It can be daunting to have each step followed and commented by others — as great as this community part of a project is, it takes away some of the weightlessness and lust for experimentation, and one's perfectionism can sometimes be the biggest road block of them all. 

All the best to you and Wren! I'm looking forward to starting a little project with it soon. :-)

– Daniel

[QuentinC]

Hello,

On my side, I'm going to leave the list and stop using Wren.

At the beginning, I found it was a very nice language. I wanted to add
some features such as the continue keyword, += *= etc. assignment
operators, as well as other stuff in the built-in library.
The syntax is very nice, it's easier to make scripts than lua, it's
safe, the syntax doesn't appear strange as it is sometimes with
AngelScript (another scriting language I tried to use before)... In
brief, Wren is really good.

However, several things have been real blockers for me:
- Re-entrancy isn't officially supported (unless it has been merged since)
- Saving/reloading compiled bytecode isn't supported either; it is
certainly important because not all scripters want to publish their
source code in clear
- the quite special compared to other scripting languages, and not very
practical way of registering foreign classes and methods; I find it not
very practical and relatively painful if you have quite a lot of
elements to register, as it is the case for me because my real goal is
to add scriptig to a game.
- the simple fact that it is in C, and not C++, what I find finally
quite sad in 2018. It was very noticible for example when I wanted to
implement a sort method for lists: I didn't want to re-implement
quicksort myself when there is a ready-to-use algorithm available in
C++, and it looks quite strange to have 1% of C++ somewhere in a project
where all other 99% is in C.

For those reasons ammongs others, I'm leaving.
I have started my own scripting language and now it isn't working that
bad, though far from finished and with the quality of Wren, and without
its speed either.
It is in C++17, support saving/reloading bytecode, and has a more
traditional way of registering foreign interfaces.
I can give the github link for those interested but the goal of this
message is obviously not to be an ad.

I still would like to say a great thank you to Wren, because it has been
a big source of inspiration for me to get started implementing my own
scripting language.
I took most of the syntax, many core concepts, quite much of the VM's
and parser's structure. My own language looks quite a lot like Wren,
inside and outside.
IN short, I have learned a lot by reading Wren's source code, and this
deserves a really great thank you.

So, THANK YOU, and all the best for the future, whoever are the new
maintainers. Keep it going.

P.S. I'm still there for a while to be able to reply, before effectively
leaving the list.

[Michel Hermier]

Hi, just for the record, is there a public version of it? Hoping he can read that comment.

[QuentinC]

Hello,

> Hi, just for the record, is there a public version of it? Hoping he
can read that comment.

Not sure to really understand the sense of your question, public version
of what ?
My own scripting language inspired from Wren ? My trials to bring +=
continue and other stuff to Wren ? Or just simply the comments I have
just written here ?

[Michel Hermier]

Code/changes you might have written so far, on wren or your own langage. There is no requirement to publish, but it's nice to see changes and have reviews from others.

[QuentinC]

Hello,

> Code/changes you might have written so far, on wren or your own
langage. There is no requirement to publish, but it's nice to see
changes and have reviews from others.

No problem.

I have deleted the github repository where I initially forked Wren, but
I still have the source code. You can download it here:
http://vrac.quentinc.net/wren.7z
You can do what you want with it, but I won't give any support.
I would still appreciate a thank you if you take something useful out of it.

ON my own language, I have opened a github repository that you can find
here:
http://gjithub.com/qtnc/qscript
I haven't yet mentioned Wren as being a big source of inspiration, I
don't know if I have to, should, or shouldn't ?
I'm certainly going to change the name of that language once I find a
cool name.

[Michel Hermier]

Le mar. 4 déc. 2018 à 18:03, QuentinC <webm...@quentinc.net> a écrit :

Hello,

 > Code/changes you might have written so far, on wren or your own
langage. There is no requirement to publish, but it's nice to see
changes and have reviews from others.

No problem.

I have deleted the github repository where I initially forked Wren, but
I still have the source code. You can download it here:
http://vrac.quentinc.net/wren.7z
You can do what you want with it, but I won't give any support.
I would still appreciate a thank you if you take something useful out of it.

Dunno if it will be used but at least it exists and is documented. Thanks for that.

ON my own language, I have opened a github repository that you can find
here:
http://gjithub.com/qtnc/qscript
I haven't yet mentioned Wren as being a big source of inspiration, I
don't know if I have to, should, or shouldn't ?

At least maybe a little phrase in some readme for influence.

I'm certainly going to change the name of that language once I find a
cool name.

Tried to read it, and ohhh boy, you have at least 2 big problems. The first one is that Q is used by at, and you surely don't want that. And the biggest one, indent that code correctly. As this it is unreadable and won't attract anyone.

I read code for more than 25 years now, and last time I saw code indented like this was around 98. Even if I was paid for use this style, I would rather quit.

This is no personal offence, but outch forget that style and use something like clang-format.

Cheers

[QuentinC]

Hello,

> Tried to read it, and ohhh boy, you have at least 2 big problems. The
first one is that Q is used by at, and you surely don't want that.

That's what I said, I will need to change the name, that's one more
reason. I will find a cool name at some point. Wren is quite a cool
name: short, not an obscure acronym, no special character...

> And the biggest one, indent that code correctly. As this it is
unreadable and won't attract anyone.

There is no offense, here you have the explanation: in fact, I'm blind.
This means that, for me, indentation is much more painful than useful. I
can break it very easily without notice and it makes navigation inside
the code harder.
So, unless I'm not forced to do it, I don't do it. Since I'm not at
work here, I don't do it.
This also explains why I prefer don't make multi-line blocks for a
single or a few short instructions, why I prefer early return than long
nested blocks, etc.

I can of course make an effort for code written in the documentation, I
have tried it in the readme (I don't know if it looks OK or not), but in
the real source code, given that it changes all the time, it's painful.

I go with the principle that, anyway, people are using Eclipse, Visual
Studio, XCode , or any other editor that can reformat the code
automatically to their taste.
This isn't my case; at work I'm using eclipse because I really need to,
but when I develop in my spare time, I'm not using something better than
notepad and command-line. I'm happy with it, and I find it much simpler
than bloated user interfaces. Notepad and command-line hadn't prevented
me from making a game played by 16000 users, up to 500 simultaneously,
translated into 6 languages and developed in a mix of Java, C++, PHP and
JavaScript.

[Michel Hermier]

There is no offense, here you have the explanation: in fact, I'm blind.
This means that, for me, indentation is much more painful than useful. I
can break it very easily without notice and it makes navigation inside
the code harder.
So,  unless I'm not forced to do it, I don't do it. Since I'm not at
work here, I don't do it.
This also explains why I prefer don't make multi-line blocks for a
single or a few short instructions, why I prefer early return than long
nested blocks, etc.

I can of course make an effort for code written in the documentation, I
have tried it in the readme (I don't know if it looks OK or not), but in
the real source code, given that it changes all the time, it's painful.

I go with the principle that, anyway, people are using Eclipse, Visual
Studio, XCode , or any other editor that can reformat the code
automatically to their taste.
This isn't my case; at work I'm using eclipse because I really need to,
but when I develop in my spare time, I'm not using something better than
notepad and command-line. I'm happy with it, and I find it much simpler
than bloated user interfaces. Notepad and command-line hadn't prevented
me from making a game played by 16000 users, up to 500 simultaneously,
translated into 6 languages and developed in a mix of Java, C++, PHP and
JavaScript.

Hmmmm, I had talk with a blind users in the past, don't remember the context thought. And it's true that the braille displays don't have made huge improvements. How is yours? 1 lines 40 chars or do you have the chance to have a bigger one?

I never used one so I can only imagine how it is working, and I understand parts of your decisions. And thinking at these displays limitation, I find it very challenging to come up with productive interfaces for blinds or even a code style.

Maybe you should try to contact the guys behind behind clang-format. It might interest them to produce a format style for blind people. Even if some options might already be sufficient, having a named style could bring some traction and consideration. It would not be an ideal situation, but it could help to go back and forth from both world.

[QuentinC]

Hello,

> Hmmmm, I had talk with a blind users in the past, don't remember the
context thought. And it's true that the braille displays don't have made
huge improvements.
How is yours? 1 lines 40 chars or do you have the chance to have a
bigger one?

I'm not very good at braille, enough to read short texts but really not
for coding. I'm using a screen reader.

There used to exist braille displays of 60 or 80 characters 15 years
ago, but nowadays the tendency is to make them smaller: 40 characters is
already large, most of newest models are 30, 20 or even less.
Anyway, the number of characters doesn't change much, up to a certain
point. The fact is that you always "see" a single line at a time. It
remains difficult to see blocks at a glance.

> Maybe you should try to contact the guys behind behind clang-format.
It might interest them to produce a format style for blind people. Even
if some options
might already be sufficient, having a named style could bring some
traction and consideration. It would not be an ideal situation, but it
could help to
go back and forth from both world.

Unfortunately, it isn't so easy. There couldn't be a single
"blind-friendly" format.
As in the sighted world, it's a question of tastes and colors. Nobody
can ever agree to the same unique solution.

[Jean-François Geyelin]

Any idea when the open PRs are going to start getting looked at?

[Computer Science]

Save the language before it vanishes - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/wren-lang/EprF824Ng44

在 2018年11月14日星期三 UTC+8下午11:54:32，Bob Nystrom写道：

[Michel Hermier]

If you are not afraid of some small changes in the language, and be ready for some radical changes in the VM, there is my fork (canary). It doesn't have the final shape I want it to have, and I still need to enable foreign call reentrancy. But at least it's moving, and there are some critical issues that are solved.

The code is a little slower compared to stock wren, but there are some critical issues that are solved, like memory is properly counted and stack corruption fixes in some corner cases.

Cheers

[Sven Bergström]

Hey everyone!
End of year is a busy time, let's keep this in mind as we're just getting started here.

I personally think taking over maintenance of a language, and then just diving straight into large scale change, isn't the approach for wren (or for me). Therefore, I've instead started with house keeping, and preparing for the year ahead so that we're in a good position to being taking bigger strides, together.

In the mean time, I've been evaluating various options for a good static blog, so we can have somewhere consistent to post news about wren. I've also updated the logo on the Github organization with an iteration to see how it feels. 



I know everyone is excited about the future - as am I. 
Let's work together to ensure that we're contributing positively to the community atmosphere and not creating unnecessary concerns where there are none :)

I am also excited to start tackling (more) of the issues and PRs once the end year rush slows down. 

Hope everyone is having a great holiday,
and I look forward to what the year ahead holds for us with Wren.
Happy new year!

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[William DeVore]

Hi, What is the current status of Wren in relation to the new maintainer?

On Tuesday, January 1, 2019 at 4:19:38 AM UTC-5, Sven Bergström wrote:

Hey everyone!
End of year is a busy time, let's keep this in mind as we're just getting started here.

I personally think taking over maintenance of a language, and then just diving straight into large scale change, isn't the approach for wren (or for me). Therefore, I've instead started with house keeping, and preparing for the year ahead so that we're in a good position to being taking bigger strides, together.

In the mean time, I've been evaluating various options for a good static blog, so we can have somewhere consistent to post news about wren. I've also updated the logo on the Github organization with an iteration to see how it feels. 



I know everyone is excited about the future - as am I. 
Let's work together to ensure that we're contributing positively to the community atmosphere and not creating unnecessary concerns where there are none :)

I am also excited to start tackling (more) of the issues and PRs once the end year rush slows down. 

Hope everyone is having a great holiday,
and I look forward to what the year ahead holds for us with Wren.
Happy new year!

On Tue, Jan 1, 2019 at 12:37 AM Michel Hermier <michel...@gmail.com> wrote:

If you are not afraid of some small changes in the language, and be ready for some radical changes in the VM, there is my fork (canary). It doesn't have the final shape I want it to have, and I still need to enable foreign call reentrancy. But at least it's moving, and there are some critical issues that are solved.

The code is a little slower compared to stock wren, but there are some critical issues that are solved, like memory is properly counted and stack corruption fixes in some corner cases.

Cheers

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[Sven Bergström]

Hey!

In case you missed it I set up a development blog here, http://wren.io/blog/

I'm busy with the next post which outlines the plans immediate term and short term.

In practice, I was ramping up on Wren dev things when, in January, our baby arrived.

This took a lot of time away obviously and then I went back to work etc. You can imagine.

I also didn't feel like that was something for the main language dev log so I told people directly, and recently on the discord as well.

I've still been working on Wren stuff though.

Now that I'm back on it and wrapping up the post we'll expect to see things moving as intended.

Thanks for checking in!

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[William DeVore]

Cool. Thanks for the update.

Ooh and congratulations on the new baby. :-)

On Wednesday, May 22, 2019 at 11:58:59 AM UTC-4, Sven Bergström wrote:

Hey!

In case you missed it I set up a development blog here, http://wren.io/blog/

I'm busy with the next post which outlines the plans immediate term and short term.

In practice, I was ramping up on Wren dev things when, in January, our baby arrived.

This took a lot of time away obviously and then I went back to work etc. You can imagine.

I also didn't feel like that was something for the main language dev log so I told people directly, and recently on the discord as well.

I've still been working on Wren stuff though.

Now that I'm back on it and wrapping up the post we'll expect to see things moving as intended.

Thanks for checking in!

[Brian Slesinsky]

Subscribed.

FYI I get a certificate error from the RSS:

NET::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/wren-lang/CAOHyZobpQef7QOeivafg%2BTgYqivnETCxaJUgDWe9a%2BENokGOpg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Sven Bergström]

If you're using an https url it'll probably complain about that, as there is no https configured yet.

The basic http url for the rss should have no errors!

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/wren-lang/CAP3gGgPrk-txBYG%2BB7CTeSo_-Ku66xVFHBtig5kG2bCOrhc54g%40mail.gmail.com.