On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 5:46 PM, Jeroen Demeyer <jdeme...@cage.ugent.be> wrote: > On 2016-04-14 17:38, Erik Bray wrote: >> >> Sage already has the problem of large >> chunks of code that are effectively unmaintained and create a >> maintenance burden on anyone serious about maintaining sage. Their >> interfaces whither, and become inconsistent with the rest of the >> package. It's dead weight. > > I disagree with the above. It's not necessarily a problem to have > unmaintained-but-still-working code.
It is a problem to have unmaintained and maybe working but poorly tested and poorly integrated code that nobody knows how to maintain anymore and that doesn't meet the coding and interface standards of the rest of the package. My greatest joy as a software engineer is almost always deleting code not adding it. I think part of the larger problem of this discussion about modularization is that nobody has made any concrete proposals yet. You and others state that there are parts of Sage that are too difficult to separate out because they're too deeply intertwined. But nobody is necessarily proposing making cuts in those places. In some cases maybe the extent of their circular dependency should be taken as evidence of a need for refactoring. But I also believe you that there are large parts where this is not the case. Those parts I believe mostly make up the core package and shouldn't be broken up. Perhaps some of us who support "modularization" as a general principle should work together to discuss a specific proposal as to where to make cuts and how to maintain this. Then it would be easier to discuss the merits and problems with *specific* modifications, rather than circular discussions about hypotheticals that may or may not be relevant. I'd certainly be interested in having that discussion with anyone else interested. I don't know most of the Sage package well enough though to know where to begin. Thanks, Erik -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
