On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 8:52 AM, James Byrne <li...@ruby-forum.com> wrote: > Zach Dennis wrote: > >> >>> Such action causes avoidable and pointless work. >> >> And to disprove this argument I will defer to the avoidable and >> pointless work you will be causing those who maintain the software, >> > > This is a completely illogical, and inherently contradictory, statement. > > The issue is that a tool is supposed to be reliable. Reliability > includes the notion of preserving prior behaviour. This ensures that > people who invest their time in using the tool do not have their trust > in it destroyed by avoidable changes. > > Further, by its very nature, a tool is used by vastly more people than > those that create the tool, otherwise it has little value. The idea > that a large number of people should be inconvenienced in order that a > few people are not strikes me as rather selfish and frankly, > unprofessional. Have you ever dared to make that type of argument to > your employer or client? > > Yes, software evolves; and yes, there are many things we do in ignorance > that experience reveals as both unfortunate and wasteful. But, time is > money and causing test suites to fail by removing parts of the API just > because they appear ugly seems to me to break the contract that one > makes with those who choose to use your tool instead of another. > > Let use consider this construct: > > object.should be_close(value,delta) > > why not > > object.should be_close_to(value,delta) > > Or > > object.should be_near(value,delta) > > Or > > object.should approximate(value,delta) instead? > > Which is "better" then the others? Which is "uglier"? Who cares? Pick > one and stick with it; or, if one feels compelled to improve the style > then at least keep that which already works, and is in use, working.
James, Chill, please! This is not productive at all. You started this thread with a condescending tone and you've already spent more time (and your enterprise's money) ranting about this than it's going to take you to make this change when it comes, and you continue to be insulting with comments about being selfish and unprofessional. If you'd like a civil conversation, then drop the attitude. I explained my position in another post in this thread, and I look forward to your *respectful* responses to those thoughts. Cheers, David _______________________________________________ rspec-users mailing list rspec-users@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
