(I have take the liberty of changing the subject line, which may be less than ideal for some people's reading style.)
Responses inline. > There is something of an issue here, though: where, exactly, should > the line be drawn between "thou shalt not question this on the mailing > list!" and "fair game for discussion" In principle the line is clear. Everything is fair game. Novel feedback is always welcome. Question small decisions, question big ones. Press hard for quality. The opposite of providing novel feedback is recovering old ground. This takes two (often overlapping) forms: (1) Pushing an agenda when you aren't up to speed enough to be in the conversation. (2) Pushing an agenda when project leadership has said, "I understand your feedback and disagree. This is not the direction we plan to pursue." Here are some specific examples: (A) The OP on the "fess up" thread drifted further and further into category (1) as the thread continued. He did not understand the difference between language and platform, and from there was at a loss to understand our decision-making. The very first reply on-thread covered the issue (http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/msg/448a2fec7636e5ad). If only the thread could have died there... (B) A minority of people have pushed back on the numeric changes in 1.3. This is category (2) feedback. There are real tradeoffs here, and Rich has made decisions that not everyone will agree with. > You seem to feel that major, already-made > design decisions that would require a fork and massive effort to do > differently lie on the "shalt not question" side. What about more > minor choices -- for example, which of the three kinds of primitive > math overflow behaviors, throwing, auto-promoting, or wrap-around, > should be the default? Ken, you are beating a dead horse on 1.3 numerics. You haven't told me anything I don't know already, and you have said several things that suggest that you haven't put in the time that we have to think through the issues. In particular: (1) You think that the overflow defaulting choice is minor, and I think it is fundamental. (2) You were unaware of the platform issues in Java that drove us to implement our own BigInt. That said, Ken's questions on numerics are not unwelcome. It is not realistic for every comer to the mailing list to have encyclopedic knowledge about what has gone before. So nobody should bite anyone's head off for asking a question that has been answered before (particularly if e.g. it is hiding in a deep, convoluted thread and isn't search friendly). Keep the feedback coming! Preferably in atomic chunks with good subject lines. :-) Cheers, Stu Stuart Halloway Clojure/core http://clojure.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
