This reminded me a bit of this thread:
Rookies in the Bike Shed
31–40 of 45 posts
Re: Rookies in the Bike Shed
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
To summarize it: Someone upgraded from Rails 2.3 and had an issue, since xhr? stopped returning a boolean but 0 instead (the regex index of the first match). But he used the return value of that predicate in javascript. In Ruby 0 is truthy, but in Javascript it is false. So he made a pull request to change the behavior back to a boolean instead of 0. @fxn then said that's not needed, and the predicate did return a tr…
Indeed, it took me some 24 hours to revert. I reflected about it for some time. After thinking about it for a day, I was convinced the commit was sending the wrong message, and felt it had to be reverted. The commit message explains the rationale.
I hate to be harsh, but just to give some perspective: You really come across as stubborn and intractable there. Your rationale basically boils down to "People might think I was wrong if we change this." The reason given is not anything like "The code I am reverting is inferior," it's just "This code doesn't support the point I want to make." You even said that if his commit message had been different — not the code, just the commit message — you would have left it.
Try imagining this from somebody else's eyes — what does it look like?
Re: Rookies in the Bike Shed
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, it took me some 24 hours to revert. I reflected about it for some time. After thinking about it for a day, I was convinced the commit was sending the wrong message, and felt it had to be reverted. The commit message explains the rationale.
I hate to be harsh, but just to give some perspective: You really come across as stubborn and intractable there. Your rationale basically boils down to "People might think I was wrong if we change this." The reason given is not anything like "The code I am reverting is inferior," it's just "This code doesn't support the point I want to make." You even said that if his commit message had been different — not the code,…
I can only say you basically have no idea what you are talking about. I know my motivations, you can't read my mind chc.
Re: Rookies in the Bike Shed
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate to be harsh, but just to give some perspective: You really come across as stubborn and intractable there. Your rationale basically boils down to "People might think I was wrong if we change this." The reason given is not anything like "The code I am reverting is inferior," it's just "This code doesn't support the point I want to make." You even said that if his commit message had been different — not the code,…
I can only say you basically have no idea what you are talking about. I know my motivations, you can't read my mind chc.
That is true, and I'm sorry if it sounded that way. I was speaking from the perspective of interacting with other people, not your inner thoughts. You might actually have had very good reasons why your choice was superior, but you did not share them with anyone else, and from an impartial observer's perspective, it looks like this stonewalling is what made a simple PR turn into a huge bikeshedding flamefest. If this doesn't matter to you, I apologize for wasting your time. It just seemed like something I would want to hear if I were in your place.
Re: Rookies in the Bike Shed
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
To summarize it: Someone upgraded from Rails 2.3 and had an issue, since xhr? stopped returning a boolean but 0 instead (the regex index of the first match). But he used the return value of that predicate in javascript. In Ruby 0 is truthy, but in Javascript it is false. So he made a pull request to change the behavior back to a boolean instead of 0. @fxn then said that's not needed, and the predicate did return a tr…
Indeed, it took me some 24 hours to revert. I reflected about it for some time. After thinking about it for a day, I was convinced the commit was sending the wrong message, and felt it had to be reverted. The commit message explains the rationale.
Thanks for not allowing code convention to be based on mob psychologoy.
Re: Rookies in the Bike Shed
#36I saw one post mention File.world_readable? I don't know Ruby and the result surprised me. irb(main):002:0> File.world_readable?('/etc/passwd') => 420 irb(main):003:0> File.world_readable?('/etc/shadow') => nil 420 is decimal for octal 0644 which is the permissions on my /etc/passwd file. Fair enough, but as someone looking from the outside it seems weird to leak partial and unreliable information like that. Especial…
It's not a common idiom to use !! in Ruby.
Re: Rookies in the Bike Shed
#37The Rails commit that spurred this post, apparently: https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/5329
To me it is not bike-shedding, but being rightfully indignant with decisions being made not by merit but from a position of "authority", completely ignoring the opinion of the majority of people presenting pretty logical arguments in favour of the change. I do not understand how you can defend returning a method call result completely meaningless from the caller point of view by saying that returning an actually mean…
That's the only objective read of this. There were a couple of good reasons to make the change, a couple of bad reasons to, and no reasons not to. The discussion fixated on the bad reasons early on, it became a matter of principle on both sides, and thus the change was not made despite the good reasons.
It's not bikeshedding, but there ought to be a name for that.
Re: Rookies in the Bike Shed
#38The Rails commit that spurred this post, apparently: https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/5329
It's frustrating to work with people who will go to the mat over pedantic, highly philosophical points like that, right or wrong. Arguments should be grounded on concrete pros/cons.
Re: Rookies in the Bike Shed
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can only say you basically have no idea what you are talking about. I know my motivations, you can't read my mind chc.
That is true, and I'm sorry if it sounded that way. I was speaking from the perspective of interacting with other people, not your inner thoughts. You might actually have had very good reasons why your choice was superior, but you did not share them with anyone else, and from an impartial observer's perspective, it looks like this stonewalling is what made a simple PR turn into a huge bikeshedding flamefest. If this…
If that was the intention I appreciate it.
Yes it matters to me, but up to a point. I cannot do things in my life seeking approval or saying yes to some people when I am convinced the answer is no.
Also, saying no, and not applying the PR the way I did, with the rationales and respect I showed, should not be taken as an offense. People just get upset when they see the red label "Closed".
On the other hand, for every 24 haters, I can present 24 lovers. It just doesn't matter, one has to do what he thinks is the correct action. Do it politely, but do it.
Re: Rookies in the Bike Shed
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me it is not bike-shedding, but being rightfully indignant with decisions being made not by merit but from a position of "authority", completely ignoring the opinion of the majority of people presenting pretty logical arguments in favour of the change. I do not understand how you can defend returning a method call result completely meaningless from the caller point of view by saying that returning an actually mean…
That's the only objective read of this. There were a couple of good reasons to make the change, a couple of bad reasons to, and no reasons not to. The discussion fixated on the bad reasons early on, it became a matter of principle on both sides, and thus the change was not made despite the good reasons. It's not bikeshedding, but there ought to be a name for that.
My read of the article is that "bikeshedding" generally covers discussions in which the energy expended vastly outweighs the gravity of the topic under discussion. There can be a correct answer to, "what color should we paint the bike shed?" (or, at least, many incorrect answers). The fact that one side might be correct (or more correct) than the other does not justify the effort.
The point of the article, as I read it, was that you should consider the energy needed to influence a decision v.s. the impact of that decision.