From: Sean O'Dell <sean@...>
Date: 2004-06-15T03:48:34+09:00
Subject: Re: [OT] [ANN] celsoft.com/Battery 0.1.1

On Monday 14 June 2004 11:35, Mark Hubbart wrote:
> On Jun 14, 2004, at 9:35 AM, Sean O'Dell wrote:
>
> But it remains that you called the alphabetical ordering (and the
> decision to use it) arbitrary. Arbitrariness, by definition, requires
> either randomness or capriciousness. I think this is not supported by
> evidence. as for the ordering itself being either random or capricious,
> well, that's silly. It may not be the ordering you expect, but it
> *certainly* isn't random. As for the decision: If it were my software
> library, I would feel insulted were someone to call my decision
> capricious, if I had put some time into working it out. And telling
> someone that their decision was random, when it involves a project that
> they built, and they probably care about deeply and are proud of, seems
> very rude. Calling the ordering arbitrary was okay, since you didn't
> know better at the time; but calling his *decision* arbitrary was
> uncalled for.

That's not the precise meaning of the word, but Nathaniel did admit to it, and 
I never meant to insult Nathaniel.  I removed the word from all docs the very 
second someone mentioned that it appeared insulting.  Also, I never directly 
applied the word "arbitrary" to Test/Unit; people just made the association 
themselves because, well, Test/Unit really did run tests according to how 
Ruby listed them, which seemed random to me, but I'm not sure; I couldn't 
find a pattern to them.  I think just sort of knew I must be talking about 
Test/Unit.  I didn't realize there was just one main test framework for Ruby 
and people would naturally come to that conclusion.  When I did though, I 
removed the word.

> Having the option to order tests is good. Having multiple output
> formats is good. I suspect that both of those will end up being
> absorbed by the Test::Unit framework, and your project will have done
> it's job, contributing to the quality and flexibility of Ruby's
> libraries. If they aren't added, I suspect you will flesh out your
> framework to be as feature-rich as the official one. And that will be
> good too. :)

I'll be on it, that's for sure.  I got sick, a long time ago, of asking for 
things and getting a lot of heat for it so these days, when possible, I will 
just implement what I need myself and if I have time, release it publicly.

> > Accuracy is 100%.  Annoyance at having this discussion is somewhere
> > above that.
>
> Diplomacy goes a long ways toward avoiding unwanted flame wars.

It's hard to be diplomatic when you are absolutely unable to accept any less 
than what you are asking for.  I absolutely could not accept answers like 
"you don't need that" or "I don't think that fits my API" or "that 
un-Ruby-like."  I absolutely need interfaces, I absolutely need control over 
the run order of my tests.  I absolutely need a lot of things, and mostly I 
implement them myself and I'm happy with the results.  I only ever mentioned 
interfaces here because I felt it was something Ruby should provide, not be 
something custom-implemented (although my own custom implementation works 
like gangbusters).  I went on with Battery because I mentioned it once in the 
yaml mailing list, and someone thought it was a terrific idea to have YAML 
output, so I released it publicly.

I absolutely could not accept less than what I implemented myself.  Diplomacy 
is tough to have when you simply don't have the room to compromise on some 
things.

	Sean O'Dell