"Documentation by paper"

[Daniel Berlin]

>
> > Thread closed now?  Pretty please?
>
> Feel free to use the amazing kill thread capability of your
> mailer (I trust it has this :-) The subject line has been
> quite clear, and although we have deviated from the original
> point (that a mere reference to a paper does not constitute
> acceptable documentation), the discussion has in fact stayed
> quite consistently on track.


Except that some of us don't use mailers that reply to discussions 
properly, so the replies don't get put in the thread.

This is an inconvenience to all of us, of course.
Maybe people would be more willing to sacrifice and go along with 
certain viewpoints that aren't their own if others would do the same 
(IE "sacrifice" and use threading mail programs) in general. Just a 
thought.  After all, I don't believe this is the first time the whole 
"non-properly threading mailer" problem has been pointed out.  While 
you (Robert), have been accommodating in this regard (and a big thank 
you for that), others have not, even when it hurts all of us (much like 
the lack of documentation).

Then again, in this thread, some are continually appearing to say (I 
don't want to put words in people's mouths) that their way is the only 
way to good software, and that everyone else's viewpoint (even if it 
only minorly varies from their own) is evil and must be destroyed in 
order to produce good software.
As if the exact level of documentation necessary in programs was a 
settled argument in software engineering, and everyone is just being 
lazy and not wanting to follow it.
It's all about compromise, folks.
Here it's quite clear that everyone has their own dug in position on 
this topic, and it's probably better to find out *exactly* what their 
positions are (In terms of what documentation they think should be 
required, and to what level), and find some  compromise, than it is to 
reiterate the positions over and over again and the reasons for them.

Right now what we are doing reminds me of the Simpsons where they are 
getting electro-shock treatment, and are all strapped into chairs 
shocking each other (and of course, Maggie is just randomly hitting 
buttons shocking other family members).
To quote Dr. Marvin Monroe from the Simpsons, "This is not the way to a 
healthy family interaction"

As a lawyer in training, I see this style of "discussion" maybe 8 
million times a day.  It's never produced a solution, and after 
watching it for a while you just want to throttle everyone on both 
sides until they come to a compromise.  Unfortunately, throttling 
people is not considered to be a valid style of mediation.

On a side note, I'd love to be able to just kill thread it instead of 
writing these emails, but as previously stated, some of us don't use 
mailers that do threaded replies properly.

--Dan