On Mon, Dec 04, 2000 at 07:56:21AM +0000, Alan Burlison wrote:
> How about a design document (format to be decided) and a 'design +
> commentary' document which is the design document with the condensed email
> discussion inserted into it as the commentary. That way there is a design
> spec for the implementation, but also the 'why we did it that way' is
> captured for posterity. Mailing lists are OK for having the discussion, but
> aren't very good for recording it for posterity. I'm inspired by the perl5
> digest produced by Simon, which I think is a really, really useful thing -
> you can use it to get the essence of what went on and why, and then drill
> down to the meat if you need to.
I'm planning to write (in my copious free time) an open-source-licensed book
on the implementation and design of Perl 6, which should capture for posterity
the sense of the discussions we will have had while hammering out the design:
Several models were discussed for garbage collection, but XXX turned out
to be the best for our purposes, because ____. YYY initially looked good,
but had the disadvantage that ____, and it was felt that ____. We also
considered ZZZ, but all agreed that ____.
--
The sky already fell. Now what? -- Steven Wright
