On 2014/07/03 18:19, Eric Rubin-Smith wrote:
The fact that (literally) millions of applications get written despite
any perceived shortcomings in the documentation suggests that the docs are
at least "adequate," if not "perfect."
Your argument is analogous to an argument that the Earth is the center
of the universe because lots of people think so. Nevermind what we
actually observe with our own eyes.
No, his argument is not analogous to that at all. It's always fun when a simple question devolves into debate-style philosophy, and
good to see someone well-versed in it, if a little overzealous to impose it on an honest reply that did not mean to incite a debate.
Since we are in debate realms now, allow me to point out that his argument is flawed, but not in the way that you propose, his
argument is not an appeal to the masses or an appeal to authority, it does not even propose the veracity of a statement but simply
demonstrates the absence of conflict. Your remark in answer is however a straw-man since it imposes a different paradigm as the
object of the contention to what the original post refers or implies.
In layman's terms: He did not say "the documents are perfect because it works for everyone else", he did say that "nobody else
registered the shortcoming, it may however still be a shortcoming (in fact he professed that it is so in his opinion too) but since
the lack of it seems to not discomfort anyone, it is probably unfair to proclaim it "inadequate".
The difference is slight but important. Where his argument is flawed is in that he addresses the subjective and not the object of
discussion. i.e he did not show adequacy, simply inferred perception of it - but then, he was not trying to make an argument.
A vague citation to a million anonymous programs of unknown quality is
not a convincing reason to think otherwise. And you and I both know
that a random sample of 1 million programs will contain roughly 999000
crappy ones. :-)
The citation is not vague, he did not mean *any* selection of a million programs, but indeed all of the millions of programs
commercially available running sqlite on many billions of devices (refer: www.sqlite.org home page) - I would contend that it will
be hard to find even 1% really bad programs among a million of these that do sqlite an injustice for merely existing - but that is
just a contention since I have no resources to prove it and your estimate of "crappy" is unquantifiable. However, not his statement,
nor mine in answer to your contention, or any of the above matters in terms of the truth of the premise - I too believe there is a
benefit to be had for full disclosure of errata and I do hope your request is escalated to a ticket.
You seem well-versed in these matters, I believe there is a need for a documentation specialist in the sqlite dev team, apply
online. :)
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