On Wed, Oct 04, 2000 at 03:42:57PM -0500, Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote:
> Too many RFCs live in a vacuum by not not explaining in enough detail
> what is the problem they are trying to solve, but instead go ahead and
> pull new/backward-incompatible syntax and/or keywords and/or semantics
> out of thin air.
This skirts, but does not *quite* touch on, the *REAL* failure of the
RFC process. The real failure, as I see it, is this: We can only tell
whether an RFC is officially good or officially stoopid when Larry casts
his vote on it. And that only happens once all the RFCs have been
completed.
This makes it nearly impossible to build ideas on top of previous RFCs,
since you don't know if you're building on rock or sand; if you're
building on sand, everything you've built will fall down, not just the
first brick. I can't tell what syntax I should use for my proposals
because I don't know what sort of syntax is on and what isn't.
To be more specific: Perl isn't something you can separate out into
discrete blocks; two proposals are very, very infrequently independent.
All of the language RFCs affect the way the internals is going to go.
Holding up a bunch of cool ideas is one thing, but that means you build
wide and low, and not narrow and high.
What would have encouraged us to build higher would be to know if each
storey at a time is acceptable.
--
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
-- Aldous Huxley
