[boost] Design-by-committee?

From: Beman Dawes (beman_at_[hidden])
Date: 1999-09-03 09:08:03

Dave Abrahams wrote:

>P.S. I am concerned that this list, and the boost libraries, are now
>suffering from "design-by-committee" syndrome, where nothing appears
to be
>acceptable unless everyone's pet issue is addressed. That is the
dynamic
>which produces bloated software, poorly integrated APIs, and
cluttered
>user-interfaces. I prefer instead "design-by-collaboration", where a
few
>people can get together and produce a product, which either thrives
(and
>evolves) or dies on the strength of its usability.

There are differences between the "design-by-committee" syndrome,
"loud-and-noisy" public scrutiny, and the bazaar effect.  (Those not
familiar with Eric Raymond's famous paper, "The Cathedral and the
Bazaar", may want to visit
http://tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/).    

Which is happening here?  Let's look at the results:

The new (and hopefully stabilizing) version of boost/cast.hpp (just
posted) seems less bloated and has a simpler interface than the
earlier versions.  AFAIK, Each of the templates is in the form
preferred by their initial authors, except that my original numeric
casts have been replace by Kevlin's much better numeric_cast.

Yes, the process has been loud-and-noisy, and you can call it
design-by-committee if you want.  But as one of the original
collaborators, I don't mind admitting it seems to have produced a
superior result to the initial "design-by-collaboration".

Another point is that cast.hpp is made up of fairly independent
contributions from several people.  That may not be the best model -
it may tend to lead to a lot more discussion that single author
contributions.  

--Beman