Boost.ScopeExit based on D's scope(exit)

Andrei Alexandrescu SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org
Mon Mar 2 11:58:39 PST 2009


Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 2:23 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu
> <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
>> I'm, if anything, at the very low end of credit-beggars foodchain. You
>> wouldn't believe if I told you about some (rather notorious within the
>> community) people I know that ought to be a tad more modest :o). I just have
>> a dim view of not giving credit. Proper credit is extremely easy to give,
>> costs nothing, and is the right thing to do. The author of ScopeExit clearly
>> knew everything of ScopeGuard since he linked to it, but did not quite
>> acknowledge the relationship of his work to ScopeGuard, which should be done
>> even assuming he developed ScopeExit entirely in isolation. That's just...
>> you don't do that.
> 
> For what it's worth, the D docs page that he links to doesn't mention
> your name at all.  I mean, I suppose Walter could give credit for each
> feature but that seems a bit out of place in a formal spec.
> 
> Only in http://www.digitalmars.com/d/2.0/exception-safe.html are you
> actually mentioned, and even there it doesn't really credit you as the
> inventor of the idea, just that you argued for it.

I know. What happens is that Walter introduced the construct in the 
language after he had internalized it so well, he might as well have 
thought of it himself. Then he changed the syntax, implemented it from 
scratch, so after all that work it's easy to think, heck, it's my work.

What happens since Walter made a team with Bartosz and myself is that 
the exchange of ideas is so thick, sometimes it's funny how we all 
surprise one another candidly assuming paternity (and rightly) for a 
given concept. For example, for const/immutable my guess is that each of 
us feels entitled to think of it as his brainchild. (Sorry hasen.) Which 
is in fact the truth. Same about introducing default-isolation in D. 
Bartosz was extremely opposed to it in the beginning, I remember a huge 
debate about it at Kahili. A couple of months later, it was almost his 
idea :o). I'm no more lucid. Every once in a while I need to remind 
myself that local instantiation, a very cool feature unique to D, was 
Walter's idea that I merely stumbled upon. Neither of us initially knew 
how good it was...


Andrei


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