Re: public/catalog [was: Re: ERB Decisions of March 26th]

At 9:51 PM -0800 3/29/97, Jon Bosak wrote:
>
>Here's the problem.  Most users who have expressed an opinion (this
>includes myself) want public identifiers.  But most implementors who
>have expressed an opinion won't have anything to do with them until a
>behavior is specified.  Given this division, I vote with the
>implementors, because an imperfect system that's implemented always
>beats a perfect system that isn't.


But this is a case where the implementors are insisting on offering an
_unneeded_ solution (we have SYSTEM available to supplement PUBLIC when and
as needed), that is not especially _wanted_. Now that seems
counterproductive to me. It's the well known case of software people
telling the users that they're wrong about their needs.

   A well-implemented system that doesn't do what you want is not so
useful. Neither is not having a system at all, because someone doesn't have
the same definition of "work" as you do.

   I'll be posting a more coherent, integrated statement in a bit, but
thisd just made me jump.

   I've been on both sides of that, but in this case, the implementors are
just wrong. I can't avoid being that blunt, I'm afraid.

   --- David

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David Durand              dgd@cs.bu.edu  \  david@dynamicDiagrams.com
Boston University Computer Science        \  Sr. Analyst
http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/dgd/   \  Dynamic Diagrams
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Received on Monday, 31 March 1997 16:37:28 UTC