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Rust would have died if it used the BDFL model. We had a huge disadvantage starting out, with a tiny team at a smaller company and little name recognition among

Rust would have died if it used the BDFL model. We had a huge disadvantage starting out, with a tiny team at a smaller company and little name recognition among the lead developers. The only reason Rust achieved any popularity at all was that we listened to the community when they were pushing us to compete 1:1 with C and C++ on performance. Cargo likewise would have been terrible without community input. The community was starting hostile forks before we course corrected. Additionally, Rust development frankly moves faster than any other language that I know of. You need only look at the release notes for that. The reason is that people can truly be invested in the project, able to make technical decisions as well as contribute code.

kodablah 8y ago
I completely believe that, but I also believe between Graydon originally and yourself, the role kinda exists :-) I meant to give Rust as an example of community-driven, not of the slow decision/implementation cost comment, but I can see how I wrote that wrong; that part was meant for the bikeshedding communities that fork in every direction. Maybe I should revise my statement to say strong leadership is ideal instead of a directionless community.
sbjs 8y ago
Community input is different though. Communities need a leader (or small set of leaders) who's responsible for judging whether something fits into the overall vision of the product. If a whole community agrees that something should be this way or that, then sure, that's darn good evidence that it's a good fit and probably inherent to the usefulness of the product, and it would be unwise for them to ignore it. But sometimes you have 50/50 splits and a leader is there to make the ultimate decision based on their expertise and understanding of the problem-domain and how the product fits into it.
- pcwalton 8y ago
  That's why we have the small language teams who have to sign off on things. It's not democracy. I think the ideal situation is when the community develops a solution that works well for them and then leadership steps in to shepherd it through the integration process. Leadership isn't there to force their ideas onto the community. When done properly, everyone is empowered and nobody comes out of the process frustrated. This is something we have had to learn over time, but I truly think it is the right way to develop open projects like languages.

kodablah 8y ago

I completely believe that, but I also believe between Graydon originally and yourself, the role kinda exists :-) I meant to give Rust as an example of community-driven, not of the slow decision/implementation cost comment, but I can see how I wrote that wrong; that part was meant for the bikeshedding communities that fork in every direction. Maybe I should revise my statement to say strong leadership is ideal instead of a directionless community.

sbjs 8y ago

Community input is different though. Communities need a leader (or small set of leaders) who's responsible for judging whether something fits into the overall vision of the product. If a whole community agrees that something should be this way or that, then sure, that's darn good evidence that it's a good fit and probably inherent to the usefulness of the product, and it would be unwise for them to ignore it. But sometimes you have 50/50 splits and a leader is there to make the ultimate decision based on their expertise and understanding of the problem-domain and how the product fits into it.

pcwalton 8y ago
That's why we have the small language teams who have to sign off on things. It's not democracy. I think the ideal situation is when the community develops a solution that works well for them and then leadership steps in to shepherd it through the integration process. Leadership isn't there to force their ideas onto the community. When done properly, everyone is empowered and nobody comes out of the process frustrated. This is something we have had to learn over time, but I truly think it is the right way to develop open projects like languages.