From: Francis Hwang <sera@...>
Date: 2004-10-27T23:30:57+09:00
Subject: standard libraries [was: 1.8.2 - what can we do to help?]


On Oct 27, 2004, at 10:18 AM, Markus wrote:
>      Let's say you are understandably frustrated.  I saw your post and
> looked at it briefly, but nothing jumped out at me.  (I've haven't used
> the CGI library much, and not recently).  That was about all I could 
> do,
> since I don't even own a Mac, at home or a work, and the only ones I
> have access to are used by people who would not want me installing MSIE
> on them.
>
>      If you want another pair of eyes to help you solve the problem 
> I'll
> be willing to help with looking and thinking, but that's about all I 
> can
> do.
>

I appreciate the offer, but I think I'm more concerned about the 
general policy than about my teensy little bug. (For the time I've just 
changed my HTML forms to workaround it.)

Here's my concern: If a library is in the stdlib, then I think a 
beginning Ruby user is going to assume a few things about it:

- it's mostly feature-complete
- its interface is unlikely to change or grow in ways that causes 
backwards compatibility problems
- it's mostly bug-free
- if I report what I believe to be a bug, somebody will be there to at 
least help me through that process.

I don't mind that nobody else has had this bug. And I don't mind that I 
had to work around it. What I do mind is the possibility that in the 
future, some programmer will recommend Ruby inside his company, some 
Ruby project will do six weeks of development building on a stdlib -- 
erb, cgi, rexml, whatever -- and then at crunch time they'll hit an 
obscure bug and won't have anywhere to report it and won't be able to 
get any sign that anybody anywhere will help them with it. How much 
will the company like Ruby then? How safe will that programmer's job 
feel then?

I mean, I'm a regular name around these lists and I've even talked at 
RubyConf before, and I had to send 4 separate emails to 3 places ( one 
person, two mailing lists ) to get one offer of help from somebody. 
What would a beginner Rubyist have done with the same problem?

So I guess what I'm saying is that this isn't really about me. This is 
more about policy. What is the expectation (on Matz' part, on everybody 
else's part) regarding the standard libraries? And if we, the Ruby 
community, are falling short of that, what holes need to be filled to 
deliver on that expectation?

F.