Re: CF3+4 (was Re: Parallel query execution)

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 8:47 PM, Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com> wrote:
>> http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/28927.1236820868@sss.pgh.pa.us
>>
>> That's not a positive review, but when it comes down to it, it's a
>> pretty factual email. IMHO, anyway, and YMMV.
>
> Really? I've always thought that was a pretty constructive review. It
> certainly gave me the laundry list of things I'd have to fix to ever get
> that change in, and how what looked like a simple patch is actually
> fairly complicated.

I agree that it was constructive, but it wasn't exactly endorsing the
concept you put forward, so it was not a positive, aka favorable,
review.

Also, you did put it on a T-shirt. :-)

>> My own experience is different from yours, I guess. I actually like
>> it when I post a patch, or suggest a concept, and Tom fires back with
>> a laundry list of reasons it won't work.
>
> This can be a problem with new submitters, though. If you're not used
> to the current community dialog, that email can be taken as "your idea
> is stupid because" rather than what it actually means, which is "fix
> these issues and resubmit, please". That's often not clearly
> communicated, and is important with new submitters.

Yep. Even long-time participants in the process sometimes get
demoralized. It's always fun to be the smartest guy in the room, and
one rarely gets that luxury with any regularity on pgsql-hackers.

>> It often induces me to step
>> back and approach the same problem from a different and better angle,
>> and the result is often better for it. What I don't like is when I
>> (or anyone) posts a patch and somebody says something that boils down
>> to "no one wants that". *That* ticks me off. Because you know what?
>> At a minimum, *I* want that. If I didn't, I wouldn't have written a
>> patch. And usually, the customers I support want that, too. Now,
>> somebody else may not want it, and that is fine. But IMHO, posting a
>> patch should be considered prima facie evidence of non-zero demand for
>> the associated feature.
>
> On the other hand, saying "this patch has potential side effects /
> peformance penalty / makes admin more complex / has a lot of code to
> maintain. How common is the use-case you're talking about?" is legit.
> Features which impose a "cost" on people who don't use them need to be
> justified as "useful enough" to be worth the cost.

Totally agreed.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company