Re: [PATCH] Add shell-quasiquote.

[taylanbayirli@gmail.com (Taylan Ulrich Bayırlı/Kammer)]

Werner LEMBERG <wl@gnu.org> writes:

>> I'll leave it to you to guess what the problem is.  I've explained
>> it in detail multiple times over the last couple days here and in
>> the bug report.
>
> Well, I'm a complete noob regarding this topic, but I think there is a
> problem with your perspective.
>
> There are a couple of *very* experienced developers on this list,
> having great a knowledge of not only Emacs but also of other Unix
> tools, in particular problems with the various shells.  Especially
> Paul is quite active here, providing many patches for gnulib,
> coreutils, autoconf, and many other projects.
>
> Your writing insinuates that that they all intentionally don't want to
> understand what you are trying to say.  Has it ever come to your mind
> that it is probably *still you* who failed to express the issue
> clearly enough, inspite of your many attempts?  Or may there is an
> `agree to disagree' situation you have to live with but obviously
> cannot.

Thanks for your concern, and I agree it seems weird to think that the
problem is in such experienced developers, but (genuinely without any
intention of sarcasm in this sentence) I know that I'm not delusional or
anything of that sort, and a fairly simple and well-defined change I
requested seems to not have been understood after having explained it
many times, often with very careful and detailed wording, and the only
thing I can conclude from that is that I'm simply not being listened to.
(Keyword is "safety guarantees", if you're curious.)

What also gives me a bit of confidence is that I know at least two also
*very* experienced Emacs/Elisp developers, long-timers of the GNU and
Emacs communities, who have express a deep disdain towards emacs-devel.
And at least one other newcomer who I know also left e-d in a fit of
rage a while ago.  (Back then I read through the discussion that enraged
them and to be honest didn't understand it myself.  I think it was a
more involved topic than a mere safety guarantee, but maybe also the
nature of the over-arching problem here is such that it's mostly only
the "victim" who even sees the problem?  Not a psychologist here.)

Worse, there seems to be a big split in the Emacs community, and among
some parts of it, emacs-devel is subject to regular ridicule, which I
find disheartening, since it's *the* place in which the development
happens.  When I came here a couple days ago I tried to be as optimistic
as I could, and I'm generally pretty thick-skinned too, but my
experience in this thread felt like a sort of psychological torture. :-)
After that I stopped finding it funny to be jokingly called insane by
someone for even *wanting* my Elisp packages in GNU ELPA.


Among the swathes of people who feel disdain towards emacs-devel, I'm
probably just one of the few who are stupid enough to spend such amounts
of time and energy arguing, and/or blunt enough to just go forth and
claim that there is a very serious behavioral problem with some people.
I've probably also made an ass of myself in some ways, and most people
want to avoid that of course.  If it weren't for these reasons, one
would probably see threads like this happening more often on this list.

(I will strain myself not to argue any further by the way.  No need to
respond to this mail if you don't want.  I would rather stop now.)

Taylan