The DIP Process

[Jonathan Marler]

On Tuesday, 26 February 2019 at 22:56:40 UTC, Joseph Rushton 
Wakeling wrote:
> On Tuesday, 26 February 2019 at 17:46:32 UTC, Jonathan Marler 
> wrote:
>> I think most points of the DIP process make sense, but it has 
>> one very large problem.  Feedback from language maintainers 
>> (Walter and Andrei) is not done until the end of the process. 
>> You're asking someone to go through a process that can take a 
>> year before the people who have the power to accept or reject 
>> the proposal look at it or leave any feedback.  This is 
>> extremely wasteful of the author's time, the reviewer's time 
>> and causes extreme pressure for everyone involved.  A years 
>> worth of waiting, debate and revision that are now wasted and 
>> could have easily been avoided if language maintainers left 
>> their feedback early on.  Walter and Andrei should be involved 
>> in the process throughout, not just render judgement at the 
>> end.
>
> It's worth making a comparison to how new features are 
> incorporated into other languages, such as C++, or Rust, or 
> Fortran, or Haskell.  In every case, it's hard -- years of work 
> trying out different designs, different implementation 
> attempts, balancing costs against benefits.  D is if anything 
> far more flexible than many of its counterparts when it comes 
> to accepting new ideas.
>
> Obviously it's not great if something goes through multiple 
> rounds of feedback and revision only to be rejected at the very 
> end, but sometimes it's only _because_ of those multiple rounds 
> of feedback and revision that a proposal is clear enough to 
> take that kind of decision on it.  Early feedback doesn't help 
> with that.

You said "but sometimes it's only _because_ of those multiple 
rounds of feedback and revision that a proposal is clear enough". 
  Which DIPs are you referring to?  I can't identify any proposal 
that falls into this case.

>
> On the other hand, one can flip the problem on its head: 
> perhaps the problem is less that Walter and Andrei can come in 
> at the end with a rejection, than that things they are going to 
> reject get put in front of them in the first place.  That 
> suggests that either the review process may be ineffective at 
> weeding out problematic proposals, or that DIP authors may be 
> too strongly biased towards revising and resubmitting their 
> proposals rather than withdrawing them when problems are 
> identified.

I agree with what you're saying here but doesn't really speak to 
the point which is that the process would be much better if 
Walter and Andrei were involved earlier in the process.  The 
system as it exists today is almost comically flawed, take a 
whole year and a lot of people's time to put together a proposal 
for 2 people without any feedback from them until the end.  
Feedback is the most important part of any successful system, 
without it, the system can quickly diverge and go off on an path, 
and the longer it goes without feedback to correct itself, the 
worse and worse it gets.  A year is too long to go without any 
feedback or course correction.

>
>> In the years I've been here I have found that feedback from 
>> anyone other than Walter and Andrei has very little bearing on 
>> what Walter and Andrei will think.  The entire community can 
>> think an idea is great, but then Walter or Andrei completely 
>> reject it.  And the opposite is true as well, I've seen W&A 
>> champion an idea that the community generally rejects. 
>> Designing a process to ask many people to create and perfect a 
>> proposal for a year catered to 2 specific people without any 
>> feedback from them is mind-boggling to me.
>
> I'm going to say something comically rude here, but with the 
> serious intent of provoking everyone to reflect a bit.
>
> Which is: have you considered the possibility that Walter and 
> Andrei are the only people who really know what they're talking 
> about, and everyone else is a [expletive] idiot? :-)

Depends on the subject.  There have been times when I've had to 
explain something to Walter and/or Andrei, they don't know 
everything.  Languages are very hard to get right and even the 
smartest people in the world can have completely opposite 
opinions on things.  I have my own opinion on their strengths and 
weaknesses, but I think everyone will agree with me that they do 
have blindspots and weakness, including them.  Well, I suppose 
you may not agree with me based on what you said :) In general 
it's not good to base the merit of an idea on who is giving it, 
humans are very flawed creatures when it comes to completely 
objective logical discourse no matter how smart someone is.  
Instead, merit should be based on the content of an idea, not who 
gives it.