Notes from C++ static analysis

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Thursday, June 27, 2013 13:47:53 Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> On Thursday, 27 June 2013 at 06:59:49 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> > But if we make a design decision that favors 1% of our userbase
> 
> I really think we all need to be more careful about these kinds
> of statements. I often see posts on the newsgroup where someone
> says "feature/function X is totally useless".... and it is
> something I actually use.
> 
> In this thread, there's I think three people who said the extra
> arguments are a good thing (myself, Andrei, and Peter). And
> there's what, maybe a dozen participants in the thread (I didn't
> count, I think it is less though)?
> 
> That's not a big enough sample to be statistically significant,
> but what are the odds that this thread is so skewed that only 1%
> of D's userbase feels this way, when 25% of the thread disagrees?

I wasn't arguing that only 1% of the users care about this particular feature. 
What I was objecting to was that Andrei seemed to think that argumentum ad 
populum was an invalid argument, and when you're talking about an API and the 
userbase for that API, I really don't think that argumentum ad populum is 
invalid. If you make a design decision that causes problems for 99% of your 
users, then it's a bad design decision, and I think that the fact that the 
majority of the users would then be against it should hold weight.

For this particular feature, I don't know how many people want format to 
ignore extra arguments. Certainly, prior to this thread, I'd heard Andrei 
discuss it once, and I've never heard anyone else even mention it. And 
initially, everyone else in this thread thought that that it was a bad idea. 
So, it at least looked like the majority thought that it was a bad idea. And 
if that held true, then I think that that would at least be an argument for 
making format require that the number of arguments match the number of format 
specifiers. It wouldn't necessarily be enough in and of itself (particularly if 
the use case for allowing more is valid and doesn't really harm the people who 
don't use it), but I think that it would still be valid argument.

So, I was objecting to Andrei's assertion that what the majority thought was 
not a valid argument rather than trying to specifically assert that we 
definitely shouldn't do this because of how many people were against it. What 
we do ultimately depends on what all of the arguments are and what all of the 
various pros and cons are.

But your point is well taken about 1% vs 99% and whatnot. We certainly don't 
want to decide that only 1% of users care about something based on the half-a- 
dozen or so people who happen to have posted in a discussion on it over the 
course of a few hours.

- Jonathan M Davis