Generality creep

[Mike Franklin]

On Sunday, 31 March 2019 at 16:18:35 UTC, Rubn wrote:

> Look at this comment as someone pointed out before:
>
> https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/8557#pullrequestreview-149952733

Yes, Andrei's review was a bit too strong but he did change 
course later in that thread.  Also recognize that the original 
author did not provide much motivation or justification (though, 
I'm guilty of that too).

I encourage contributors to please provide a short essay with 
your PRs to help everyone see the larger picture.  No one can pay 
attention to everything going on, and not everyone who reviews 
pull requests is intimately involved with the overall long-term 
objective that some PRs move forward.

It also makes things easier on the reviewer as they don't need to 
do so much of their own investigation to determine context (that 
always irritated me a little when I was reviewing; make it easy 
on me), and it increases the likelihood of a PR getting a review 
and getting accepted.

I do ask Andrei and Walter to understand that their reviews hold 
*much* more weight than others.  One minor objection from them 
makes others think "Well, Walter and Andrei don't like this, 
therefore my opinion is irrelevant".  The fundamental problem is 
there isn't any real due process to challenge and ask for 
reconsideration.  (e.g. 
https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/9506#issuecomment-477936480  -- 
No response).

Mike

When I was reviewing, it was always in the back of my mind "Are 
Walter and Andrei going to scold me if I merge this?", especially 
after they did once. In a way, we do work on behalf of Andrei and 
Walter and we wnat

Mike