...is what took to get std.experimental.logger in Phobos.

https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/1500

A time to celebrate! Many thanks to Robert who carried it through a long gestation, Dicebot for managing the review process, and everybody who provided feedback, especially Martin Nowak for his ideas.


Andrei

On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 10:09:45AM -0800, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> ...is what took to get std.experimental.logger in Phobos.
> 
> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/1500
> 
> A time to celebrate! Many thanks to Robert who carried it through a long gestation, Dicebot for managing the review process, and everybody who provided feedback, especially Martin Nowak for his ideas.
[...]

Certainly, this deserves celebration!

But OTOH, if *this* is what it takes to contribute a new module to Phobos, then it's no wonder we have trouble finding contributors... Most would give up before they even try. I think there's an imbalance here between the quality of existing Phobos modules vs. the quality expected of future Phobos modules. Whatever happened to incremental refinement??  Do we really expect flawless perfection before merging to, of all places, std.*experimental*?


T

-- 
Fact is stranger than fiction.

thank you @!"In order of appearance on github"() { Dicebot, JakobOvrum, monarchdodra, klamonte, grogancolin, fugalh, Geod24, andralex, braddr, AndrejMitrovic, MetaLang, p0nce, yglukhov, elendel-, sigod, sybrandy, DmitryOlshansky, SerialVelocity, drasha, klickverbot, MartinNowak, jacob-carlborg, 9il, quickfur, deadalnix, MrSmith33, 9rnsr }

and anyone I forgot

thank you very very much

On 1/26/15 10:17 AM, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 10:09:45AM -0800, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> ...is what took to get std.experimental.logger in Phobos.
>>
>> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/1500
>>
>> A time to celebrate! Many thanks to Robert who carried it through a
>> long gestation, Dicebot for managing the review process, and everybody
>> who provided feedback, especially Martin Nowak for his ideas.
> [...]
>
> Certainly, this deserves celebration!
>
> But OTOH, if *this* is what it takes to contribute a new module to
> Phobos, then it's no wonder we have trouble finding contributors...
> Most would give up before they even try. I think there's an imbalance
> here between the quality of existing Phobos modules vs. the quality
> expected of future Phobos modules. Whatever happened to incremental
> refinement??  Do we really expect flawless perfection before merging to,
> of all places, std.*experimental*?

For a good while there was no std.experimental. Its introduction was partially motivated by the stalemate of this contribution. -- Andrei

On Monday, 26 January 2015 at 18:25:13 UTC, Robert burner Schadek wrote:
> thank you @!"In order of appearance on github"() { Dicebot, JakobOvrum, monarchdodra, klamonte, grogancolin, fugalh, Geod24, andralex, braddr, AndrejMitrovic, MetaLang, p0nce, yglukhov, elendel-, sigod, sybrandy, DmitryOlshansky, SerialVelocity, drasha, klickverbot, MartinNowak, jacob-carlborg, 9il, quickfur, deadalnix, MrSmith33, 9rnsr }
>
> and anyone I forgot
>
> thank you very very much

Thanks to you for your contributions !
It takes a lot of patience and motivation to go through this process for so long. I'm pretty sure you paved the way for better / faster (stronger?) review :)

On Monday, 26 January 2015 at 18:25:13 UTC, Robert burner Schadek wrote:
> thank you @!"In order of appearance on github"() { Dicebot, JakobOvrum, monarchdodra, klamonte, grogancolin, fugalh, Geod24, andralex, braddr, AndrejMitrovic, MetaLang, p0nce, yglukhov, elendel-, sigod, sybrandy, DmitryOlshansky, SerialVelocity, drasha, klickverbot, MartinNowak, jacob-carlborg, 9il, quickfur, deadalnix, MrSmith33, 9rnsr }
>
> and anyone I forgot
>
> thank you very very much

Thank you for having the fortitude to carry this through.

On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 10:33:32AM -0800, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 1/26/15 10:17 AM, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
[...]
> >But OTOH, if *this* is what it takes to contribute a new module to Phobos, then it's no wonder we have trouble finding contributors... Most would give up before they even try. I think there's an imbalance here between the quality of existing Phobos modules vs. the quality expected of future Phobos modules. Whatever happened to incremental refinement??  Do we really expect flawless perfection before merging to, of all places, std.*experimental*?
> 
> For a good while there was no std.experimental. Its introduction was partially motivated by the stalemate of this contribution. -- Andrei

And yet it still took so long to get it in?

IMO a better approach would have been, merge it into std.experimental sooner, then submit followup PRs to std.experimental when the implementation is found to be inferior. We already officially don't guarantee non-breakage in std.experimental anyway, so we're not constrained by release schedule or anything like that.

Plus, this way it's easier for other contributors to chime in to the implementation (I know you can submit PRs against other PRs, but not many people know that or have the patience to do that).

Once we've bashed it into shape in std.experimental to everyone's satisfaction, we can move it into std proper.

If it takes just as much effort to get it into std.experimental as it would take to get into std directly, I don't see the point of the additional hassle introduced by std.experimental.


T

-- 
Acid falls with the rain; with love comes the pain.

On Mon, 26 Jan 2015 18:25:11 +0000, Robert burner Schadek wrote:

congrats!

On Monday, 26 January 2015 at 18:25:13 UTC, Robert burner Schadek wrote:
> thank you @!"In order of appearance on github"() { Dicebot, JakobOvrum, monarchdodra, klamonte, grogancolin, fugalh, Geod24, andralex, braddr, AndrejMitrovic, MetaLang, p0nce, yglukhov, elendel-, sigod, sybrandy, DmitryOlshansky, SerialVelocity, drasha, klickverbot, MartinNowak, jacob-carlborg, 9il, quickfur, deadalnix, MrSmith33, 9rnsr }
>
> and anyone I forgot
>
> thank you very very much

and of course mleise, sry I forgot you

On Monday, 26 January 2015 at 19:50:39 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 10:33:32AM -0800, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> On 1/26/15 10:17 AM, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> [...]
>> >But OTOH, if *this* is what it takes to contribute a new module to
>> >Phobos, then it's no wonder we have trouble finding contributors...
>> >Most would give up before they even try. I think there's an imbalance
>> >here between the quality of existing Phobos modules vs. the quality
>> >expected of future Phobos modules. Whatever happened to incremental
>> >refinement??  Do we really expect flawless perfection before merging
>> >to, of all places, std.*experimental*?
>> 
>> For a good while there was no std.experimental. Its introduction was
>> partially motivated by the stalemate of this contribution. -- Andrei
>
> And yet it still took so long to get it in?
>
> IMO a better approach would have been, merge it into std.experimental
> sooner, then submit followup PRs to std.experimental when the
> implementation is found to be inferior. We already officially don't
> guarantee non-breakage in std.experimental anyway, so we're not
> constrained by release schedule or anything like that.
>
> Plus, this way it's easier for other contributors to chime in to the
> implementation (I know you can submit PRs against other PRs, but not
> many people know that or have the patience to do that).
>
> Once we've bashed it into shape in std.experimental to everyone's
> satisfaction, we can move it into std proper.
>
> If it takes just as much effort to get it into std.experimental as it
> would take to get into std directly, I don't see the point of the
> additional hassle introduced by std.experimental.
>
>
> T

I don't claim expertise on library development, but isn't it the norm that the bar is raised for quality as a platform matures.  Because complexity increases much more than linearly with time, and also as one learns from earlier mistakes and missteps.

If it is not easy to get a contribution in, that raises the satisfaction of having it eventually accepted.  People like having a high bar to meet, even if that's not the way of the modern world.  And D's orientation towards excellence is one of the things I personally find most appealing.

Maybe it is worth writing up some lessons learned from the discussion on github and pointers for future contributors.