Notes from C++ static analysis

Peter Williams pwil3058 at bigpond.net.au
Thu Jun 27 20:22:43 PDT 2013


On 28/06/13 11:47, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Friday, June 28, 2013 10:44:36 Peter Williams wrote:
>> On 28/06/13 05:52, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>>> 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,
>>
>> Plato would agree with Andrei.
>
> It's definitely true that just because a lot of people think something does not
> make it true (e.g. having the majority of people think that the sun goes
> around the earth does not make it so). But when you're debating an API, your
> debating what a lot of people are going to be using, and if the majority of
> them don't think that it's user-friendly or otherwise well-designed, then I
> really don't think that it makes sense to say that the fact that most of the
> users think that doesn't mean anything or that it's not relevant. I think that
> majority opinion is _very_ relevant when discussing APIs or any type of user
> interface. It may be the case that they're wrong and that after using a new
> API or user interface, they'll eventually come to the conclusion that they're
> wrong, but their opinion is _very_ relevant IMHO.

Yes, but voting is very seldom the best way so decide a technical issue. 
  You want the best technical solution not the one supported by the best 
lobbyists.

Peter



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