On Wednesday, November 6, 2002, at 12:44 PM, Allison Randal wrote:
No time, because there are so many people clamoring to do it? Where?? Forgive me, but I have yet to see *any* ground-up Perl6 documentation of comprehensive scope, other than the occasional couple-of-page postings to the O'Reilly site. Seriously, are you saying that a document similar to this (http://cog.cognitivity.com/perl6/val.html) already exists, but that the design team is been unwilling to release it for discussion? Or are you saying that (revised) Apocalypses/Exegeses are all we're gonna get for the indefinite future, and any community efforts to the contrary are futile?I don't *WANT* to write damn documentation. I wrote a first-chapter summary of some basic Apocalypse 2 stuff because, a year and a half after it first came out, NOBODY HAD DAMN WELL DONE IT YET. Worse, I'm bloody *volunteering* great gobs of time to do it, and it's like pulling teeth to get people to agree to it!Unfortunately we don't have time to edit and approve every summary that every individual produces. Again, we could spend all our time on that task alone to the exclusion of all others. The project has to keep focus.
It has been asserted in this discussion that (1) we don't need accurate online docs yet; (2) the programming can occur (efficiently) without them; (3) continuing to move forward on the design while the details of previous decisions have yet to be specified is in fact the most efficient use of everyone's time, including that of the design team; and (4) that the community really can't offer any assistance of value here. Those notions truly surprise me.
Well, as of yesterday the most interesting topics (IMO) currently are that Dan is describing bytecode generation (i.e. he's written some needed docs), and the original "Need for fingerprinting" thread is devolving into a discussion of the JIT and GC approaches & speed, as all threads on p6-internals eventually do. They are (thankfully) focusing on Parrot core issues, not Perl6 language-specific issues, as they should be, and as they have been....you might contribute to Parrot.I would *love* to. What should I work on first...Subscribe to p6-internals and find out where they need help.
Seriously, don't patronize me: it won't get you anywhere productive, and it just ticks me off. I am not _unaware_ of the current Perl6 dynamics and management decisions; on the contrary, I am observing that the current approach has resulted in _profoundly_ little progress per unit time, given the pool of available labor and talent at our disposal, and has resulted in us revisiting decisions *repeatedly* whenever previous designs are more fully worked out.
I'm not rejecting your help. We welcome all the help we can get. I'mIt sounds like you're pretty firmly rejecting it, when it comes to any detailed documentation effort. So be it.
merely asking (wearing my official assistant project manager hat, if it
helps) that you harness your energy to the places where it will have the
maximum benefit. And believe us when we tell you that you haven't found
the right place yet.
MikeL
