Re: Throw some low-level C scutwork at me

On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 4:35 PM, Andy Lester <andy(at)petdance(dot)com> wrote:
>>> There should be nothing to maintain, if it's done right.
>>
>> Any line in the source tree will have to get maintained, or why would you
>> spend any time writing it?
>
> I meant by hand.
>
>> See doc/FAQ_DEV and those specific lines:
>
> I see no such file.  Perhaps it doesn't get exported into the git mirror?
>
>> Sorry if the "push-back" has been read as harsh, but I've got the (very
>> personal) feeling that to become a contributor to PostgreSQL, you *will*
>> have to be able to read this level of criticism back from the mail you send.
>
> I'm all for criticism of ideas.  I wish there had been some in Tom's
> original mail.

OK, so, when I initially started catching up on this thread, I was
kind of feeling annoyed at Tom, and I still wish he'd say something
along the lines of "I did not mean to give offense and I'm sorry if my
words came across in a way that I did not intend" rather than just
explaining why he reacted the way he did. That having been said, as
far as I can tell, your feeling that Tom said something rude is based
largely on the fact that he used the word "sucked", and perhaps the
phrase "rejected out of hand". Admittedly, Tom could have described
why he thought it sucked rather than just saying that it did, and he
could have said that he would vote against accepting it and believed
that others would not like it either rather than phrasing it in the
way that he did.

Then again, you didn't offer any justification for your desire to have
them in there either. You didn't ask whether they'd been previously
considered or whether the community would find them desirable. You
didn't make an argument for why they'd be better than the system
currently in use or even, at least as far as can be determined from
reading the email that set off this flame war, take the time to
understand that system before proposing your own.

One thing I have discovered about pgsql-hackers is that it is very
easy to be accused of not having done your homework even if you
actually have. I have seen more than one well-thought-out proposal
shot down by a committer who (as it seemed to me) had thought it
through less carefully than the person proposing it. On the other
hand, there are five or ten half-baked ideas for every good one, so
the committers have something of a difficult job sifting the wheat
from the chaff. If this initial bad experience doesn't turn you off
to this community (and I hope it won't), then I think the moral of the
story is to make sure that you've done your homework before you put
forward a specific proposal. Search the archives and be ready to
answer objections that were raised to your idea previously, or to
similar ideas, if any. Read the documentation, which is excellent and
contains not only descriptions of the functionality of PostgreSQL but
a certain amount of discussion of the internals, implementation, etc.
Since you're a git user, use "git log <pathspec>" and "git log
-S<word>" to sift through the history, and "git grep <regexp>" to
search the current tree. Browse the wiki (though it's navigability is
less than excellent) and Google a bunch of related terms. Then write
up your idea and send it out in the form of a proposal, and see if you
get any support. Lack of a response is not necessarily fatal (you can
bring it up again in a month or two, perhaps in response to a related
suggestion from someone else; or add it the CommitFest wiki if it's a
patch) but if you get a couple of -1s you probably need to rethink
things. I have yet to see anything that I thought was a really good
idea have more than one person speak against it, which I think speaks
to the fact that this community includes a lot of very, very smart and
sharp people. I'm sorry that it's come across as inhospitable, but I
hope you decide to tough it out.

...Robert