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[Shane H. W. Travis]

On Sat, 12 Feb 2005, Vlad Dascalu wrote:

> I prefer my "forrest and the trees" example.

You can prefer whichever you want. The fact remains that your proposed
solution hasn't even been discussed, much less designed, coded, reviewed, or
added to the trunk. However you slice it, an elegant, long-term solution is
a long way off, and people are having problems *now*. If you want to ignore
them and focus on longer term goals, that's your prerogative, and I never
said you shouldn't. You, on the other hand, *did* say that other people
(specifically Frederic) were mistaken in not ignoring them too... and that's
where I take exception.


> The catch here is to figure out what is better to be done: spend those $10
> on 10 trees, or research on saving the forrest.
>
> (consider $1 as one month of the developer's time and so on)

Again I say; If you want to spend your time and energy developing a long
term solution, by all means do so. Nobody is trying to tell you how to spend
your time; by the same token, it is not your responsibility to tell others
how to spend theirs. Your priorities are not everyone else's priorities.


> I've noticed for example that you tend to take the $1 - fix a tree
> solution all the time, while Jake, for example, takes the $10 thing.

Then you have noticed incorrectly (at least in my regard; I won't presume
to speak for Jake) ... although the observation is irrelevant to this
discussion in any regard.


> If you get to know yourself

I know myself just fine, thanks, although again I'm not sure what it has to
do with the discussion at hand except to sidetrack things with irrelevancies.


> ... if you have the ability to
> estimate correctly the difficulty of the problem, you will end up with
> the right choice and get to the results in optimum time...

There may indeed be an 'optimum solution' for the codebase, and if it's
still pristine and sterile and only exists on development computers, then
you can do whatever you want to it without affecting anyone. Once it's
released to the public, however, the users can't just be ignored; they have
to be taken into account.

Helping the people who are actually using Bugzilla right now is *not* the
waste of time you imply -- or, rather, outright state -- that it is.


> (with the least sum of money spent).

As for 'money spent', aka 'developer time'... I don't labour under the
delusion that I know the One True Way to get to any destination, or even if
I did that everyone else has to listen to me. There are lots of ways to get
from here to there; yes, some of them may be sub-optimal, and some are going
to take longer than others, but that's something one has to accept when
dealing with a multitide of individuals over whom one has has no direct
control (i.e.being their boss, paying their salary).

This is *volunteer work*. People contribute what they want, in areas where
they are interested. If you are interested in 'the big picture', go for it!
I'm certainly not going to tell you that you shouldn't be doing that, or
that you've "lost touch" with individual users because you're concentrating
on the beauty of the code and not the people who have to use it right now.
It's your time, and your decision on how to spend it.


> So you should respect the decisions of the community where you choose to
> belong, but you should listen to everybody with an equal voice

I could not disagree more. Not everyone deserves to have an equal say in all
things; not everyone should be listened to equally on all topics. Some
people have more wisdom, more experience, and more insight, so their words
have more merit. (Oddly enough, people who think they belong in that
category usually don't.)

It's fine to listen to everyone, but not everyone is saying things of equal
worth.


> >You wanna talk about creating a sandwich-making
> >machine? By all means, do so... but don't criticize someone who is
> >trying to address the issues that exist *at this moment* by actually
> >getting his hands dirty and making a sandwich.
>
> Why not? If a community could decide, via rationale means, that it's
> better to aim for the forrest instead of the trees

'The community' does not get to decide how I spend my time, or how Frederic
spends his. At most, the community can decide that certain actions will not
be accepted/acceptable, at which point I get to decide if I want to modify
my behaviour or leave the community.


> I think it's productive to give
> feedback (criticize is kind of harsh) when it has the potential to help.

I think it's productive to give feedback too... but that's not what you did
in this situation. You said that Frederic -- specifically him, specifically
for these actions -- was wrong, had lost the big picture, and was wasting
other people's time by 'implicating' them and asking for input. Perhaps you
*meant* it as feedback of the group as a whole, but it came across very
strongly as criticism of one individual and the way he had decided to spend
his time.

Shane Travis            | My mother used to say, "In this world, Elwood,
travis at sedsystems.ca    |  you must be oh-so-smart, or oh-so-pleasant."
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan |  For years I was smart; I recommend pleasant.
                        |       -- Jimmy Stewart, _Harvey_