Re: What is this "Beman Project Development"?

From: Vinnie Falco (vinnie.falco_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-05-09 22:25:02

On Thu, May 9, 2024 at 3:07 PM Vinnie Falco <vinnie.falco_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> ...
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I pressed send by accident... continuing...

When people vote on proposals, it is based on the honor system whether or
not they have read the paper, if they are qualified, if they are
knowledgeable about the domain, and if they are voting in good faith. WG21
has to simply trust that someone who votes yes is not doing so because the
author voted yes or will vote yes to their own paper. WG21 has to simply
trust that when someone votes no, they are doing so because they believe it
is the best technical decision and not because they simply don't like the
author's politics. Or criminal record. Or because they or their company
intends to introduce a new competing paper in the future.

WG21 leaves questions of conflicts of interest, political horse trading,
non-technical voting up to the honor system. No one who votes is vetted for
their talent, industry experience, and so on. Peter Dimov, probably the
smartest guy on the planet, had his metaprogramming library turned away by
people with far less talent. The consequence is we do not have Peter's
library, but instead the promise of a better metaprogramming standard
library component that has yet to be written.

I do not have this luxury when I write libraries. I can't go up to say, a
large corporation, and convince them that I'm a really great guy who should
just be trusted. People have to opt-in to my library, unlike the standard
where after a relatively small group of people vote, all vendors who
produce standard libraries are compelled to add it. And every C++ user who
uses that standard library now has that pushed on them. No one "forces" you
to use standard library components. But the appearance of a feature or
particular API in the standard library creates enormous resistance to
alternatives, because there is value in having a normalized API which is
bundled with the compiler.

:LEWG is now notorious for having people write "direct-to-standard"
proposals. That is, people find it far easier to just write a paper and
socially engineer their way through WG21's tyranny of democracy than to
invest the blood, sweat, and tears of writing a popular library. It has
literally been said "going through Boost is more work than going through
LEWG." In other words the bar for technical excellence in LEWG is lower
than it is for Boost. I, for one, am glad that I am not someone who "have
[sic] attended rather more of its meetings than the two people who make
just slightly questionable claims about what WG21's library standardization
process is fit for" because if I was, then I would be responsible for that
lowering of the bar.

As I believe that complaining without offering solutions is equivalent to
"whining" I propose a simple solution. Eliminate LEWG, have library-only
components go straight to LWG like how it used to be, ensure a process
where people voting on papers are actual subject matter experts and not
patsies or confederates, and require that these library-only components
already have some level of adoption and represent the state of the art.
Note that under this scheme, we would already have the Networking TS in the
standard. And the standard library would be able to connect to the Internet.

Thanks