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Re: [RFC]: designing customizable format attributes
On Sat, 9 Jul 2005, Diego Novillo wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 09, 2005 at 12:06:18PM +0000, Joseph S. Myers wrote:
>
> > The fact is that any list discussion consumes the time of readers trying
> > to avoid problematic new designs being made or enshrined in code and takes
> > away time the readers could otherwise spend fixing bugs.
> >
> Oh, please! This is nonsense.
You have a point that readers' list handling habits do vary, but
"nonsense" is as much an overgeneralisation as my comments. I have a good
notion of how much of my time is spent in following the main GCC project
list (I don't follow the java/fortran/libstdc++ subproject lists) and how
this varies with the volume and topics under discussion. For me, time
trying to influence what goes into FSF GCC through list discussions
(whether pointing out problems of detail in patches or discussing
high-level design issues) is as much FSF GCC development time as time
directly spent fixing bugs or adding new features.
People posting to newsgroups would traditionally be warned:
This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire
civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of
dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what you are doing.
Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [ny]
I think the principle here still applies, to mailing lists just as much as
to newsgroups and to time as much as to money. The present discussion is
comparatively short. Some past discussions, say the recent one on signed
integer overflow, have been much longer and less productive.
--
Joseph S. Myers http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~jsm28/gcc/
jsm@polyomino.org.uk (personal mail)
joseph@codesourcery.com (CodeSourcery mail)
jsm28@gcc.gnu.org (Bugzilla assignments and CCs)