Re: improving our contributing tools and workflow

[David Kastrup]

Janek Warchoł <address@hidden> writes:

> 2013/9/26 Phil Holmes <address@hidden>:
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Janek Warchoł"
>>
>>> In a truly Grahamic spirit, i'm going to focus on this issue and not
>>> participate in anything else on the mailing list until we're done
>>> (with the exception of Tie Crusade which i hope to resurrect).
>>
>> Good luck.  Let me give a Graham-style warning.  Don't invest any
>> more time and effort initially than the amount you can discard
>> without problem. That's to say - don't put months of work with the
>> risk that the other contributors won't accept the change and all that
>> valuable work is junked.
>
> This sounds like you're not going to participate in this.  Do i
> understand correctly?  It also sounds very discouraging to me.

There is a joke about an experimental physicist approaching the college
dean for funding a collider.

The dean is annoyed: "Why can't you be like the mathematicians?  They
just need pencils, paper, and a wastebasket and will work for years.
And the philosophers don't even need a wastebasket..."

Joke aside: if you are going to do serious programming or infrastructure
work, your most important tool _will_ be the wastebasket.

You can't make decisions without evaluating things, and evaluating
things does not even mean that the work will lead to a change from the
current state of affairs.  It may make you realize that minor changes
will already address some problems, for example.

If that sounds very discouraging to you, don't study mathematics.  And
actually, I'd not recommend studying philosophy either, if just for the
sake of philosophy.

-- 
David Kastrup