Re: refactoring problem
On 2/5/2013 12:38 PM, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
I think it might be worth filtering out feature requests by asking
requestors to list at least one drawback of including their feature. If
they can't think of any, then they are going to be totally clueless
about how easy or hard a feature is to implement.
That is too easy. Make it at least three drawbacks.
In my experience, most people coming up with inane feature requests
can't articulate one drawback. Most of them that can rationalize at
least one drawback can come up with several more if pressed, so it's
only the first batch that's really useful as a filter.
I will point out that my experience is largely limited to open-source
projects' RFE pages, and some conversations thereof. Among such
inanities as I have actually seen people opine are gems such as:
* Integrating 16MB extensions will magically make that size disappear [1]
* It is easier to ask novice users to install a custom shell program and
then write out ssh automatic upload scripts than it is to make a simple
SFTP plugin (in terms of UI)
* A userspace program should distribute a custom filesystem driver that
it uses internally for all of its state [2]
* If the "From" header identifies X as a sender, a message can only have
come from X
I am, of course, excluding the hundreds of variants of "how had can it be?"
[1] "Surely there's some code savings to be had by integration, right?"
was the response I got after pointing out that this doesn't work.
[2] To be fair, a devotee who thought that Plan 9 was the greatest thing
since sliced bread.
--
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth