On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 10:56 AM, Laurent PETIT <laurent.pe...@gmail.com> wrote: > People criticized me > > Hello Ken, > > please, don't take it bad, but just halt for a minute, and take a deep > breath. > Nobody criticized you. To convince myself with this, I've reread the first > posts following your first ones: > > David Nolen: > "For quite a few good reasons, the most important being that it makes Rich > Hickey's life a lot easier, and ours as well as a result of that. > Best to read over the very, very long thread on the subject."
No objection to this one. > Brian: > "This topic has been discussed to death before on this group. This reads as a (mild) criticism. > Short version: > Doing the right thing is actually harder than you might first think: > methods in Java must choose between returning a primitive and...." Suggests a criticism, but furthermore seems to miss the point. If we were debating whether to make arithmetic work the 1.2 way or the 1.3 alpha 4 way while still busily creating Clojure from scratch, which way would be easier to implement would be a key factor in the decision and whether the choice we made might break existing code wouldn't be. However, Clojure 1.2 exists and is already implemented, with arithmetic working the 1.2 way, and there is a ton of existing code that may be relying on arithmetic working the 1.2 way. So breaking existing code IS material to the debate now, and whether it's hard to implement the 1.2 way is not. There's no need to implement the 1.2 way because it's already been done. > Michael: > "On Dec 14, 2010, at 9:26 PM, Ken Wesson wrote: >> <quickbasicg...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> This topic has been discussed to death before on this group. >> If so, it was before I joined. > That's what archives are for: This is the one I objected the most to. First of all, I argued back (mildly) against the (mild) criticism from quickbasicguru (and what, I might ask, is one of those doing on a lisp mailing list? :)) and Michael argued instead of acceding. So it's sort of as if an elbow came close to my face, possibly unintentionally, I took a mild action (raising my own arm in a blocking posture) to prevent it knocking my glasses off, and someone grabbed my arm and tried to yank it down again to ensure the elbow hit me in the nose. That's a deliberate attack and it makes it more likely the elbow was also. Furthermore, Michael's statement carries with it the implication that I should search the archives for every word I'm about to use before every post to this list, which would take hours of my time every day if implemented. That simply cannot be reasonable and I feel it necessary to make it very firmly clear that no such expectation can be considered reasonable. In particular, I pointed out that if Michael's "search-the-archives-first-before-posting-anything" policy was adhered to perfectly by everyone, contributions to this list would slow to a crawl, if not stop entirely. There are 2 ways to reduce that: apply the policy only to some users, or only to some topics. The first of these is obviously grossly unfair. That leaves the second. The problem with the second is: which topics "require" an archive search and which do not is not itself obvious. Such a policy turns this list into a minefield; unless you search the archives on every post (check for a mine at every footfall) you might oneday fail to search on a post on one of the "forbidden" topics (fail to check for a mine at a spot where there's actually a mine). The only way to avoid the minefield effect, other than not requiring (via punishing with public castigation) people to check the archives at all, is to post the "touchy subject list" somewhere. Of course, then there's the problem of making sure that everyone knows about the touchy subject list! And about every update to it. It would have to be reposted every few days like the usenet faqs of yore, with a clear indication in the subject header of whether anything had been added. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
