Re: [boost] RE process (prospective from a retired FreeBSD committer)...

Subject: Re: [boost] RE process (prospective from a retired FreeBSD committer)...
From: Dave Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-01-31 13:18:19

At Mon, 31 Jan 2011 09:34:56 -0800,
Steven Watanabe wrote:
> 
> > No, I know I can't prove any of this... and frankly I don't think I
> > need to.
> 
> Yes you do.  Simply throwing out catchwords gets you nowhere in my
> book.  

Here's what I meant: I think most people understand what I'm talking
about.  There will be a few people who just disagree, or don't get it,
or will object for some other reason, and that's OK.  I don't need to
convince everybody.  That said, my assessment could be way off the
mark.

I've been having this discussion in good faith, trying to make
substantive arguments, being careful not to blow smoke, and trying to
be fair to all points of view.  If that looks to you like "simply
throwing out catchphrases," I certainly don't see any point in
expending effort trying to convince you.

> From what I've seen, this accounts for the vast majority of
> the arguments in favor of "modularization."  Any /real/ benefits
> have gotten lost in the noise.  It's quite possible that there would
> be advantages.  I just don't know what they are.

They've been discussed many times in the past and I'm just out of time
to repeat myself at the moment, but we can try to have that
conversation again soon.  But how will we keep the "noise" (on all
sides) down?

> > Most people understand that decoupling, where practical, is
> > a good idea and that a monolithic Boost has lots of downsides.
> >
> 
> Cynical translation: Most people see the word "decoupling"
> and think good and the word "monolithic" and think "bad"
> without necessarily having any understanding of what
> it actually means in context.

I usually try hard to avoid translating the things other people say
cynically.  It's just not a very useful (or generous) way to listen,
especially when the participants ostensibly have the same aims.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com