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[janderson]

Andrei Alexandrescu (See Website For Email) wrote:
> Dave wrote:
> 
> It is then possible they were wrong, or that they didn't come with a 
> reasonable design. Speaking of which (famous last words to come), I 
> don't want to sound harsh, but if there is one thing that's worse than 
> language design by committee, that's got to be language design by 
> community. Having too many cooks in the kitchen dilutes vision, which is 
> probably the single most important thing in a language design. 

I couldn't agree more on this point.  I'm glad we have someone like 
Walter at the helm with a clear vision and an end goal.  I've been on a 
few design by committee projects and you can never get everyone to 
agree.  Projects would get to a point and then someone would who didn't 
like one direction would lose enthusiasm and then we were back to square 
one.

Someone needs to say, this doesn't fit into my overall picture and this 
is the way we should go forth.  Projects work best when there is a clear 
direction.

Having said that, I've been in groups where everyone was assigned a 
particular piece of the puzzle to be the lead on.  That seemed to work well.

 > The few
> places where Walter made populist decisions are eminently visible in the 
> language design (ah, "length", gotta love that one), and many feature 
> requests that have been aired on this newsgroup are in dire need of design.


Here I don't agree, Walter (as much as we would like to believe) doesn't 
have the experience of the entire community collective.   He is wise to 
listen to others point of view.   He is even more wise to be willing to 
change his point of view, if a good enough argument can be put forth.

It's a very diplomatic way of doing things.

-Joel