OT: 'conduct unbecoming of a hacker'

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 12:17:40PM -0500, Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 02/09/2016 09:11 PM, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
> >
> >My email is inevitably met not with acceptance, nor with constructive
> >discussion, but with some attempt to derail the entire enterprise.
> >Here are some real examples, paraphrased by yours truly:
> >
> >     I think it should be done some other way, even though the other
> >way obviously doesn’t work for you and so far nobody has ever been
> >found who is willing to implement it that way
> >     I don’t want to solve this problem without also solving
> >[unrelated problem X], your proposal doesn’t address [unrelated
> >problem X], therefore I am inclined to reject it
> >     I don’t know you and there might be a bug in your patch. This
> >patch is too important to leave to somebody new. At the same time it
> >is not important enough for any of the core committers to get to it.
> >     Defend this proposal. You’re telling me you “need” encryption in
> >an internet communications library, or you “need” unicode support in
> >an object storage library. I don’t believe you. We’ve gotten along
> >just fine for N months without it, and we’ll get along for another 2N
> >months just fine thanks.
> >     Look, we’ve already implemented [sort-of related feature] even
> >though it’s buggy and doesn’t cover your usecase. That decision was
> >complicated and people were arguing about it for years and I really
> >don’t want to go through that jungle again. If you wanted to do it
> >this way you should have spoken up two years ago.
> >
> 
> Unfortunately, that sounds very similar to experiences I've had here
> in D-land :( Gets very frustrating.

Have to agree with you there. :-(

While, on the whole, my experience of D has been very pleasant, and I
will probably stick to it for the long term, there *are* some rough
edges that, arguably, should have been ironed out by now. But every time
the topic comes up people get defensive and then the interminable forum
threads ensue, and at the end nothing gets done because everyone is
spent from all the arguments.

More and more, I've found that participating in forum threads is, in
general (there *are* exceptions), inversely proportional to actually
getting stuff done.  So nowadays I rather just submit a PR instead of
getting entangled in the latest Great Debate. OTOH, even PR's can also
get discouraging sometimes when it touches certain controversial issues,
when it can get stonewalled for months on end, a great deterrent for new
contributors to join in.


T

-- 
Almost all proofs have bugs, but almost all theorems are true. -- Paul Pedersen