Re: [HACKERS] Happy column dropping

At 02:43 PM 1/23/00 -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>> I certainly don't want to discourage Peter, either, and perhaps
>> was a bit too harsh. But release of a feature this half-baked
>> would fit the stereotype many people have held towards free,
>> open source software, and postgres in particular.

>I again am totally confused by the reaction to this.

>Peter has done a lot for 7.0. Only Tom Lane and Jan have done more work
>on 7.0 than Peter. He has also fixed many TODO items from the list.

Yes, and that's great. I'm not commenting about those things, though.
Though I have to say, having just finally built the pre-7.0 sources,
I like the new psql formatting.

That doesn't mean I have to like an "alter ... drop column" that doesn't
really implement "alter ... drop column", though, does it? :)

>We is not releasing tomorrow. He is putting in what he has and asking
>for advise.

Perhaps I'm suffering from a misperception, then...my understanding
was that his having committed the changes meant they would be showing
up in the upcoming V7.0 Beta release.

> Yes, it would have been better if he would have discussed
>this first. However, he is writing _huge_ amounts of PostgreSQL code.
>Look at the new psql or initdb, or the other items he has done. Maybe
>he is too busy coding to bring up issues on the list.

>As long as he addresses concerns we have, I can live with some
>non-perfect code. He is relatively new to this. Honestly, only Tom
>Lane and Jan are as energetic about 7.0 as Peter, so why rock the boat.

This sounds a bit like the old management technique of measuring
productivity by counting lines of code! I should hope quality counts
for even more than quantity. Shouldn't it?

(and, no, I'm not implying that Peter's contributions are of poor
quality, I'm just reacting to your point)

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza(at)pacifier(dot)com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, Pacific Northwest
Rare Bird Alert Service and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net.