mhoyeMar 6

I'm trying very hard not to get into a fight on github after being told that a package manager should implement _mechanism_ not _policy_, a canard I haven't heard in probably 15 years.

Deciding not to set safe, reasonable defaults is an abdication of responsibility. It's negligence. We've tried doing it that way and we just know that now.

Show threadmhoyeMar 6

"Respectfully, there's no such thing as providing mechanism without policy. There is only mechanism with safe, well-considered default policy or unsafe, unconsidered default policy."

Going to bite my tongue after that.

Show threadAndrew NesbittMar 6
@mhoye package manager clients and registries are literally encoded community policy and governance rules for an ecosystem
Show threadmhoyeMar 6
@andrewnez Absolutely. It is incredible how many people will argue with a straight face that their software has somehow emerged fully formed from the brow of abstract mathematics, and is not the product of decisions people have made about how other people should work with and be affected by those decisions.
Show threadAlyssa CoghlanMar 6
@mhoye @andrewnez Also how reluctant folks sometimes are to admit that a particular default setting may not have been thought about at all beyond "well, I need to initialise it to *something*, and 'turned off' is not going to obviously break anything"
Show threadmhoyeMar 6
@ancoghlan @andrewnez I'm 100% convinced that the "mechanism not policy" argument is DARVO for software design.
Show threadAlyssa CoghlanMar 6
@mhoye @andrewnez "It's not designed badly, you're just holding it wrong"
Show threadmhoye
@ancoghlan @andrewnez ... while I, the developer of this software, who designed, implemented and documented all of the handles, am powerless and also blameless, and it is in fact _you_ who are attacking _me_ by arguing that it should be different.
Mar 6 at 2:25pmWeb
Show threadChris PetrilliMar 6
@mhoye @ancoghlan @andrewnez these are the same people who say they aren’t political.