On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 2:09 PM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
> One thing I am a bit uncomfortable with about this whole discussion is
> that it seems like a lot of the design and research is happening
> off-list, with intent to report results back here later. While that
> is obviously fine at some level, keeping the design under wraps until
> the code is written is a strategy that's had notoriously poor success
> in this community, and I hope we're not in for a repeat of that
> strategy. I think we ought to be sharing and debugging designs in
> public, not internally within 2ndQuadrant - or any other company, or
> any other mailing list other than this one. Nobody enjoys doing a lot
> of work on a patch and then having it get killed because Tom Lane - or
> someone else - points out some critical flaw in the design, and the
> way to avoid that is to try to flush out the flaws in public before
> too much work goes into it. On the flip side I certainly understand
> that sometimes you need to take some time to get your house in order
> before you can present a coherent public proposal, so don't take an
> accusation that anyone is doing anything wrong, just a possible
> concern.
I'm aware of the difficulties here. It's a bootstrap. If we start by
discussing it then we receive the predictable "that'll never work"
replies. If we start by building a prototype then we get the "you're
hiding it" replies. Neither is ideal. I'm also well aware of the "if
only you'd showed me your design sooner, I could have saved you the
time" which is the stock response from every architect I ever met. The
truth is, as I'm sure you might guess, that I don't know everything,
so making a few mistakes early on allows us to avoid the time wasting
annoyance of early stage ideas.
All I can say is that I've done this a few times before and the
process is easier once we have a little structure in place, with
details like which bike shed we are painting and what the meaning of
the phrase "to paint" entails.
My hope is that we can present a basic set of facts and measurements
that will act as a platform for challenge and discussion of
requirements and ideas.
--
Simon Riggs http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
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