Re: Announcing Perl 7

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From:

David Mertens

Date:

July 6, 2020 15:58

Subject:

Re: Announcing Perl 7

Message ID:

CA+4ieYUQkiyKZ1CenUUdkhnCJh3RstO5YDsGGjo==wqtc=VAgQ@mail.gmail.com

This:

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 3:19 PM Todd Rinaldo <toddr@cpanel.net> wrote:

>
>
> On Jul 3, 2020, at 12:06 PM, Craig A. Berry <craig.a.berry@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 8:42 AM Sawyer X <xsawyerx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 6/30/20 5:50 AM, Craig A. Berry wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jun 29, 2020 at 3:54 PM Kent Fredric <kentfredric@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> the net result, whatever p5p does
>
> For the record, p5p has nothing to do with it.  The public mailing
> list appears to have been carefully and intentionally excluded from
> the first few months of Perl 7 development,
>
>
>
>
> I understand how this seems, but I want to try and explain this:
>
>
> Thanks for the reply.  I think I already understand how you see the
> mailing list.
>
> * p5p has a record of being a very unfruitful place for in-depth public
> discussion which is not laser focused.
>
> ...
>
> * Since the proposal is too large for p5p to properly evaluate - this
> thread is strong evidence of it - we had discussed it within that group.
>
> ...
>
> Now, I understand this seems like a no-starter and many think that any
> such plan should go to p5p, but I disagree. p5p is not the developers
> mailing list as it intends to be. In practice, it is a mailing list for
> those interested in the development, which the developers are part of.
>
> ...
>
> In short, it's difficult to engage in the way that the list - or some
> people on the list - would like people to engage in. I do apologize I am
> not able to keep up. I wish I could.
>
>
> However difficult it is to engage the mailing list (and I've been an
> observer of at least some of those difficulties for a couple of
> decades), it's never been considered optional.  This is partly
> convention and tradition, but not just of the "we've always done it
> this way" type but more because there's never been an equally
> efficient (if messy) mechanism for providing transparency and keeping
> the "open" in open source. My reading of L<perlpolicy/GOVERNANCE> is
> that making major changes to Perl actually requires consulting p5p
> (what Larry calls the legislative branch).
>
>
> From what I can intuit from Larry's SOTO 20 years ago, Perl 6 was not
> initially planned on the p5p mailing list either.
>
> https://youtu.be/a1SEt_-QMDo?t=3014
>
> https://www.perl.com/pub/2000/10/23/soto2000.html/
>
> The most amusing part of the talk for me is when Larry said: "We intend to
> abandon the Perl 5 porterâs model of development, which demonstrably leads
> to a lot of talk but little action."
>
> Todd
>

I suspect that everybody on this list will see p5p as sub-optimal. Perhaps
the first thing that p5p should do is figure out a way to process
complicated discussions more effectively. My perspective on this is that
it's too easy to send off a set of ideas to the list. When those ideas are
insufficiently scrutinized or contextualized, a whole subthread ensues.
There needs to be another venue in which holistic pictures can be shaped,
where ideas can be acknowledged and contextualized within a larger
conversation.

One possible means to manage this is to use wiki-and-issue github repos.
This practice is new to me, but I have recently seen three nontrivial
discussions managed this way. Perhaps one role of the pumpking would be to
identify conversations that need to be moved to this sort of discussion
space. Then, when the details have been hashed out, the final draft of the
idea can be somehow brought back into the "p5p record" perhaps by sending
an email with the draft of the idea. This way the final product, carefully
crafted, representing various points of view, lives in the record of the
mailing list.

If this is a good idea, I can try my hand at modifying L<perlpolicy>. But
perhaps this discussion should be moved to a wiki-and-issue repo for a more
complete discussion? :-)

Just a thought.
David

-- 
 "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
  Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
  by definition, not smart enough to debug it." -- Brian Kernighan

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