Re: What is this "Beman Project Development"?

From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-05-10 10:59:32

On 10/05/2024 00:23, Ville Voutilainen wrote:
> On Fri, 10 May 2024 at 02:11, Niall Douglas via Boost
> <boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>> Maybe you do genuinely believe the current process is optimal and cannot
>> be improved upon.
> 
> But since you suggest I'm blind and suggest things like the quoted
> bit, which is just made up and not backed
> by anything I have ever said or done, have you ever considered the
> possibility that your views on such matters might be clouded
> by various proposals of yours not being "just waved through", and that
> somehow being anything but the fault
> of any problems in those proposals?

It is true I have been spectacularly unsuccessful at WG21. I have not 
affected one single word of normative text since I began attending 
meetings. The entire sum of my words affected would come from the next 
merge of the next C standard, where I have been far more effective with 
very considerably less work invested. Unsurprisingly, that's where I'll 
be moving to after the C 26 IS ships, as I'll have far more effect on 
the C++ standard from WG14 than I ever will from WG21.

As to "just waved through" there is a point there. Everybody attending 
will have an opinion on the stuff they think was just waved through and 
not enough scrutiny was applied, and the stuff which got too much 
scrutiny and got dropped through attrition and exhaustion.

I think that concentrates on the wrong thing, because all that is the 
result of the process chosen. We could choose a different process, and 
change that dynamic entirely.

I definitely think far too much emphasis is placed by WG21 on library 
features which tick committee boxes such as "this is immediately 
compatible with the abstract machine" rather than what is actually 
useful to the ecosystem or end users. Most of my proposals which made no 
forward progress were due to demands that I first get improvements to 
the abstract machine through EWG to support things like memory mapped 
files, or virtual memory, or copy on write memory.

What annoys me there is WG21 has the power to declare library APIs have 
magic powers. So just drizzle the magical powers over the APIs, draw a 
line under it, ship it. End users get portable memory mapped files with 
standardised semantics, the ecosystem benefits, everybody wins.

WG21 wasn't willing to do that here, so I gave up. I have better uses of 
my time than fiddling with the abstract machine, for which by the way it 
was demanded that I had to fork a production compiler to implement the 
new abstract machine. I don't have that kind of free time, sorry.

Of my two papers remaining, one has a pretty good chance of making it 
(path_view). The other has been repeatedly and publicly declared by 
multiple people as one of the finest library designs in C++ they've ever 
seen (std::error) but WG21 can't get over there being virtual functions 
in there. After three years of broken promises that WG21 will "do 
something" about ABI guarantees in libraries so the virtual functions 
can be replaced with something else, they just keep circling the drain 
about "virtual functions be bad".

So maybe that will die too, we have three meetings left to find out. I'm 
of the opinion that carefully designed virtual functions are nothing 
like as bad as vast quantities of templates solidifying ABI. We continue 
to standardise vast tracts of new templates repeating the std::regex 
mistake. Yet a virtual function - they're somehow _worse_ - and I'm 
sorry, I just don't get it. Especially as there really is currently no 
better alternative to virtual functions for what they do, whereas most 
templates can be designed out entirely and WG21 could impose a "minimum 
possible templates" rule going forth if it chose.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm the wrong type of engineer for 
WG21. Or, maybe better put, the kind of engineering I do does not fit 
what WG21 thinks is good engineering. A culture and fit problem. That's 
okay, I'll go where I'm more effective instead.

Niall