4 ms·

Languages not ruled by a BDFL are subject to every team member wanting to get their pet feature in, motivated by ego, fame, and career. This happens with all c

by tlb 5y ago

Languages not ruled by a BDFL are subject to every team member wanting to get their pet feature in, motivated by ego, fame, and career. This happens with all corporate software, as people compete to (for instance) foist their new videoconference system into your calendar flow. That's sort of tolerable for end-user software, but horrible for programming languages where feature-feature interactions grow as N^2.

rob74 5y ago
In the special case of Swift, with it being the language of choice for iOS development, I imagine a lot of people at Apple also want to have a word to say about the direction of development. One notable remaining exception to this trend is Go. They are committed to the "simplicity" mantra and so far they have stuck to carefully weighing and discussing any feature added to the language. I know that some consider it too simple and the "glacial" pace of development not exciting enough, but I personally appreciate it...
- caycep 5y ago
  Go has Rob Pike as a sort of BDFL within google, no? Apple it seems does well w/ a Scott Forstal or a Bertrand Serlet running cover for their engineers. maybe not so much if there's a giant committtee....
  - why_only_15 5y ago
    Rob Pike is retiring, or perhaps already retired.
  - rob74 5y ago
    The idea and most of the initial development was by Pike, Ken Thompson and Robert Griesemer, and their explanation for the simplicity of the language was that no feature was included unless all three of them could agree it was necessary. Thompson has since retired, others have joined the "core team", and Pike doesn't seem to be that active anymore in terms of actual commits - however he may still have an active role in guiding the development, I'm not following the development that closely, so I can't tell. But the way I understand it, it's more of a team effort than a BDFL situation...
    - xhevahir 5y ago
      "Benevolent junta," maybe.
  - ksec 5y ago
    >Apple it seems does well w/ a Scott Forstall or a Bertrand Serlet And before that Avie Tevanian. After that it was Craig Federighi. And I dont like the decisions and directions since then to say the very least. Sometimes I still think about Bertrand Serlet leaving, the year that Steve passed away or 6 months after Steve took leave of absence. I wonder if he saw what was coming and simply decided it was time to leave.
    - caycep 5y ago
      Sometimes I wonder if Craig finds it harder to say "no" more and put his foot down. And his priorities, for better or for worse, seem to be on developing new features vs. fixing bugs/robustness. Granted, he's had to oversee the forking of OS X into 3 active branches now (iOS, iPad, Mac), a processor transition, etc etc. And this is pure kremlinology at this point, but I feel like Apple Music, at least the client part, has to go back under Craig and not Eddy....
xiaodai 5y ago
- bigcat123 5y ago
  No, democracy is for governing human affairs in the areas of value based judgement, that being primarily in politics. Software engineering is largely non value based, they are technical based. On things they designed for and on things they base their code upon. In such affairs, democracy is a incompatible framework. It's like my c++ compiler does not compile Java code, that's a technical design and facts. It has no implications to anything political.
- majormajor 5y ago
  There's a lot of shitty "single creator with all the power" software out there too, obviously...
- mixedCase 5y ago
  Democracy is a way to get things done while minimizing the potential damage inflicted by actors that have a lot of power on a large scale for long periods of time. It is not the most efficient way to do things. It explicitly sacrifices some of it to help prevent leaders with uncontested power from coming up with things like concentration camps for dissidents.
  - infogulch 5y ago
    Democracy also defends against things like exploiting emergency powers to enact martial law. Wait...
    - jquery 5y ago
      Democracies allow for the dispersion of unlawful protests. They also crush insurrections, that isn’t limited to authoritarian regimes. The point of civil disobedience isn’t to avoid jail, it’s to show you believe so strongly in your cause you’ll go to jail anyway, so people will listen to your cause and maybe sympathize. If we skip the step where civil obedience doesn’t result in consequences then we remove its signaling power and it just leads to a race to the bottom.
amw-zero 5y ago
I totally agree. That’s why I’m completely pro the BDFL model. Committees don’t produce good products.
- Hareti 5y ago
  The BDFL model has its own flaws, primarily with longevity and succession - the fl - plenty of examples where the lead got bored, retired or went on their own path. Let alone how they deal with criticism and review (constructive or otherwise). Committees work when they have a shared vision, and a base strong enough to keep them on that path. It’s clear from Lattner’s statement that Apple have moved that vision, have not brought the group along with that change and the result is wasted effort and a passive aggressive approach. I would posit that rather than operate as a committee, instead that leadership is being exercised by a limited few and the structure is being retained as a fig-leaf :(

by tlb 5y ago

rob74 5y ago

In the special case of Swift, with it being the language of choice for iOS development, I imagine a lot of people at Apple also want to have a word to say about the direction of development. One notable remaining exception to this trend is Go. They are committed to the "simplicity" mantra and so far they have stuck to carefully weighing and discussing any feature added to the language. I know that some consider it too simple and the "glacial" pace of development not exciting enough, but I personally appreciate it...

caycep 5y ago
Go has Rob Pike as a sort of BDFL within google, no? Apple it seems does well w/ a Scott Forstal or a Bertrand Serlet running cover for their engineers. maybe not so much if there's a giant committtee....
- why_only_15 5y ago
  Rob Pike is retiring, or perhaps already retired.
- rob74 5y ago
  The idea and most of the initial development was by Pike, Ken Thompson and Robert Griesemer, and their explanation for the simplicity of the language was that no feature was included unless all three of them could agree it was necessary. Thompson has since retired, others have joined the "core team", and Pike doesn't seem to be that active anymore in terms of actual commits - however he may still have an active role in guiding the development, I'm not following the development that closely, so I can't tell. But the way I understand it, it's more of a team effort than a BDFL situation...
  - xhevahir 5y ago
    "Benevolent junta," maybe.
- ksec 5y ago
  >Apple it seems does well w/ a Scott Forstall or a Bertrand Serlet And before that Avie Tevanian. After that it was Craig Federighi. And I dont like the decisions and directions since then to say the very least. Sometimes I still think about Bertrand Serlet leaving, the year that Steve passed away or 6 months after Steve took leave of absence. I wonder if he saw what was coming and simply decided it was time to leave.
  - caycep 5y ago
    Sometimes I wonder if Craig finds it harder to say "no" more and put his foot down. And his priorities, for better or for worse, seem to be on developing new features vs. fixing bugs/robustness. Granted, he's had to oversee the forking of OS X into 3 active branches now (iOS, iPad, Mac), a processor transition, etc etc. And this is pure kremlinology at this point, but I feel like Apple Music, at least the client part, has to go back under Craig and not Eddy....

xiaodai 5y ago

bigcat123 5y ago
No, democracy is for governing human affairs in the areas of value based judgement, that being primarily in politics. Software engineering is largely non value based, they are technical based. On things they designed for and on things they base their code upon. In such affairs, democracy is a incompatible framework. It's like my c++ compiler does not compile Java code, that's a technical design and facts. It has no implications to anything political.
majormajor 5y ago
There's a lot of shitty "single creator with all the power" software out there too, obviously...
mixedCase 5y ago
Democracy is a way to get things done while minimizing the potential damage inflicted by actors that have a lot of power on a large scale for long periods of time. It is not the most efficient way to do things. It explicitly sacrifices some of it to help prevent leaders with uncontested power from coming up with things like concentration camps for dissidents.
- infogulch 5y ago
  Democracy also defends against things like exploiting emergency powers to enact martial law. Wait...
  - jquery 5y ago
    Democracies allow for the dispersion of unlawful protests. They also crush insurrections, that isn’t limited to authoritarian regimes. The point of civil disobedience isn’t to avoid jail, it’s to show you believe so strongly in your cause you’ll go to jail anyway, so people will listen to your cause and maybe sympathize. If we skip the step where civil obedience doesn’t result in consequences then we remove its signaling power and it just leads to a race to the bottom.

amw-zero 5y ago

I totally agree. That’s why I’m completely pro the BDFL model. Committees don’t produce good products.

Hareti 5y ago
The BDFL model has its own flaws, primarily with longevity and succession - the fl - plenty of examples where the lead got bored, retired or went on their own path. Let alone how they deal with criticism and review (constructive or otherwise). Committees work when they have a shared vision, and a base strong enough to keep them on that path. It’s clear from Lattner’s statement that Apple have moved that vision, have not brought the group along with that change and the result is wasted effort and a passive aggressive approach. I would posit that rather than operate as a committee, instead that leadership is being exercised by a limited few and the structure is being retained as a fig-leaf :(