[ruby-core:50821] Re: [ruby-trunk - Feature #7549][Open] A Ruby Design Process

It has been my experience in all kinds of situations (e.g. W3C, 
IETF,...), and over well more than a decade, that:
- Adding process to something creates a lot of overhead,
   for little gain
- Getting process right is extremely difficult (way more difficult
   than getting technology right)
- Once some (however broken) process is introduced, it's very
   difficult to get rid of it again
- Design by committee in almost all cases leads to way suboptimal
   technology
For people who haven't made this experience, it's usually difficult to 
believe. They have to make their own mistakes to understand. That's 
fine. But don't use Ruby to make these mistakes. Ruby deserves better.

In essence, with the current bug/future tracker, we are close to what 
Python has with their PEPs, although we have way less overhead, which is 
a good thing.

Regarding things such as parallelism, I know that Matz cares about it a 
lot. If somebody has the talent, time, and energy to move away from the 
GIL, that would be really great. Introducing a "design process", 
however, will never solve that problem.

Getting signatures on a proposal with nice-sounding words doesn't solve 
any problem either. It's not signs that count, it's code.

A programming language is a creative effort. It's not something like 
access to education, where the word "equitable" applies. Nobody would 
try to claim that they needed "equitable" access to Picasso's or 
Mozart's masterworks.

Regards,    Martin.


On 2012/12/12 16:45, brixen (Brian Ford) wrote:
>
> Issue #7549 has been reported by brixen (Brian Ford).
>
> ----------------------------------------
> Feature #7549: A Ruby Design Process
> https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/7549
>
> Author: brixen (Brian Ford)
> Status: Open
> Priority: Normal
> Assignee:
> Category:
> Target version:
>
>
> Matz,
>
> At RubyConf 2012, I gave a talk about a design process for Ruby (http://www.confreaks.com/videos/1278-rubyconf2012-toward-a-design-for-ruby). So far, over 12,000 people have viewed that talk. I think it is reasonable to say that many people are concerned about and interested in a design process for Ruby.
>
> On Monday, we had an IRC meeting of Ruby implementers. Most of the points in my proposal were discussed but I'm concerned that a lot of confusion remains.
>
> I have written a post that describes a Ruby design process and hopefully clarifies points that people found confusing:
>
> http://brixen.io/2012/12/11/a-ruby-design-process
>
> I would like to propose this process for making changes to Ruby. I am going to put a summary of the process at http://rubyspec.org/design and ask for people who support the process to submit their signature. I'd like to request that you consider the response from the community for my proposal.
>
> Thank you,
> Brian
>
>
>