flaming (was: Re: [Ffmpeg-devel] [PATCH] near is a special keyword)

[Diego Biurrun]

On Thu, Mar 02, 2006 at 12:47:39AM -0500, Rich Felker wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 02, 2006 at 01:36:33AM +0100, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> > @all: Steve is just trying to share his code here, his effort should be
> > appreciated, don't forget that we don't have an abundance of proprietary
> > software vendors that try to cooperate with us.
> 
> I understand this sentiment, but there's a proper attitude for
> everything.

I couldn't have said this any better, it's precisely the point I'm
trying to make here.

There is a proper attitude for technical criticism and it excludes
personal insults.  Period.  I feel completely silly having to explain
this, but apparently the point needs to be made.

Please apply your principles to yourself as well.  There is indeed a
proper attitude for everything.
 
> "You should 'fix your code' with this patch." is not a proper 
> attitude when the problem is in the calling code written by
> the person sending the patch.

Of course you are right, but the point is not going to sink in quicker
if you underline it with insults.  On the contrary.  If you insult
people they will just go in denial and disregard what you say, possibly
completely from then on.

Yes, Steve comes from the Windows world and yes, not all of his patches
are acceptable and yes his design principles are not always compatible
with ours and yes, sometimes he is even stubborn (sorry Steve).  But
this is not a crime, he *is* trying to be helpful and he *is* trying to
be give back to the community.  And some of his patches like the
janitorial (f)printf stuff are things that we have been desiring for a
long time.

So he can be criticized on the technical merits of his patches and
rightly so, but his effort should be appreciated and respected because
the mere fact that he shows up here with patches proves that he has the
best of intentions.  Whether his patches are good, bad, acceptable or
not is completely orthogonal to this point.

> I'm sorry for getting you down with flames Diego. I just don't have
> much patience for windows users who want software projects to put
> windows-specific workarounds in their code.

I share this sentiment, I'm completely losing my patience with you..

> I have a principle of
> hacks and workarounds that I often like to cite for MPlayer and it's
> valid here too: Whenever there's a broken component that requires some
> sort of special casing, the hacks to support it belong as close as
> possible to the offending component. In no case should they
> contaminate the general code. -Dnear=windows_sucks_near in the windows
> build config versus renaming a variable in the general code is a
> perfect example.

Maybe you could just reiterate that principle instead of flaming then.
Remember that your point had already been put across by at least two
people before you entered that thread.

Again, I feel completely silly elaborating on all of this, but I'm
coming to the conclusion that if nerds weren't socially inept in the
first place there wouldn't be as many flamewars.

Nobody would behave like this in real life and would immediately write
off others behaving in this way as rude idiots.  Unfortunately keyboards
seem to bring out the worst in people...

Diego