Re: Guile foreign object interface

[Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com>]

On Thu 09 Mar 2017 19:31, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)
>> Cc: guile-user@gnu.org
>> Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2017 18:26:09 +0100
>> 
>> I’m all for personal style, but I’m against passive-aggressive or downright
>> aggressive style.
>
> That's what I'm trying to tell you: there's no aggression.

I understand that different people can have different reactions and it's
great that you can look through "style" to the substance.  I and a
number of other contributors (evidently including Ludovic) find it hard
to do so, and the only reason we try is because we care about Guile.
It's really weird though to try to ignore this "style" when the style
often says precisely that we _don't_ care, in those words, and other
times in as many words.

Style also has an effect on how willing I am to work with someone, and
with their work.  I think for the similar reasons that we should
encourage good coding styles (that it makes it easy to read and
understand what we are doing), we should encourage good communications
styles as well, and give negative feedback on those styles that need
work.

Finally, as Ludovic mentioned, one person's style has an effect on the
composition of the body of Guile users and developers.  Whether someone
feels welcome in a group is a function of lots of subtle and
not-so-subtle things.  Feeling welcome is, for most people, a
prerequisite to further involvement.  Guile does OK here -- some good
aspects, some needs-improvement aspects -- but I think we can all think
of examples of online communities that have atrophied over time, and a
hostile online environment can be one of the reasons for this;
intervention of maintainers to avoid this failure mode should be
expected, I think.

I know it's a complicated issue.  In the particular case of the mail
that Ludovic responded to, I agree with his message and think he did a
fine job -- focussing on issues but also making clear that we should be
kind to each other in the way we communicate.  It was more charitable
than I was going to be :)

Regards,

Andy