John,

> No one said conversation/debate was a bad thing or that DM would have tons
> of plugins. The point is more that if one creates a plug in that implements
> an idea it is much easier to talk about because it is rather easy to look at
> how the changes actually works rather then pseudo-code discussions about how
> things could work. Clearly ideas like this and the exception stuff appear to
> really hit a cord with folks on both sides of the issue. As with most things
> people like to "touch and feel" concepts before making such major changes.
> That's exactly why a plugin makes great sense. I'm rather certain Dan or
> anyone else would be more then happy to be proven completely wrong with a
> great plugin that quickly gets integrated into the core because it's such a
> great improvement over the current implementation.
>
> Some one has got to write code at somepoint - why not into a plugin?

Exactly.  DataMapper is a tool that people build their business logic
around, which means that the majority of the time you spend developing
an app will be writing DataMapper code.  I think I speak for everyone
when I say that it's really important that the code you produce using
DM be simple and consistent to read, and have consistent behavior.

DM is such an important piece to the puzzle that people are bound to
feel passionately about ideas that they feel have merit, and I think
we're doing a pretty good job hearing them out.  The other thread on
using exceptions for flow control was the largest ever on this list
that I can remember with something like over 40 posts.  I'm a little
OCD so I usually monitor all the mailing lists hourly during the day,
and probably could've replied as the #2 response to that thread and
disagreed passionately, potentially slowing down the conversation.  I
didn't want to discourage people from responding, so I held back, let
both sides debate it for a long time and when I reached the point
where I felt arguments were starting to be repeated then I replied.  I
disagreed briefly and asked for code to be written that proves the
idea before further consideration.

As a maintainer, I think the best way to disagree with someone is to
say "I've listened to all the arguments, understand them, but I still
disagree.  However, please prove me wrong with working code".  In a
project like this there is simply no way that everyone is going to
agree all the time, but if there is a disagreement I think asking to
be proven wrong with real code is the best thing.

IMHO writing code demonstrates how strongly you feel about an idea.
Putting together a project that includes code, docs, specs and
actually releasing it is 10x harder than arguing on a mailing list.
It takes alot to put code out there for others to see and use.  Every
part of DM is there because someone felt strongly enough about an idea
that they committed to writing code for it.  There's very little code
there for "what if" scenarios or adding features for their own sake,
everything is born out of a frustration, and I think it shows.

Dan
(dkubb)
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