On Friday, 17 June 2016 at 20:49:54 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
On 6/17/2016 7:52 AM, tsbockman wrote:
What caught me off guard here isn't that Andrei had to approve
it in some sense
- it's that the judgment of everyone else who approved my
design seemingly
became irrelevant the moment that Andrei decided he could do
better.
History is full of examples of individuals who decide they can
do better, against all conventional wisdom, and are eventually
proven correct.
That has nothing to do with my point: "better" is subjective, and
I thought the judgment and goals of others would be given more
weight.
Andrei has an enviable track record in the industry of having
disruptive ideas that later became mainstream. He's also very
well paid as a consultant to give advice to the programming
teams of companies. His comments are worthy of serious
consideration.
I have a finite amount of time, energy, and motivation to work on
this.
I might have considered his proposed expansion of the scope of
the project if it had come earlier, when I was actively seeking
input from people about what features were important to them.
That connection did not happen, though.
Regardless, it is not clear to me that his requirements are
actually compatible with mine; I don't really care how wonderful
his ideas are if he's trying to solve a (subtly) different
problem than I am. As far as I can tell, Andrei is perfectly
willing to sacrifice my requirements to make room in his
complexity "budget" for his own.
This is, of course, his prerogative as lead designer for Phobos,
but it also kills any interest I have in working on the project
for free.
