Re: [RFC/PATCH] revision.c: add --format option for 'git log'

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 24, 2009, 08:00 UTC
Message-ID: <7vzlgcjmch.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20090224105528.6117@nanako3.lavabit.com>

Nanako Shiraishi <nanako3@lavabit.com> writes:

Show 25 quoted lines

> Quoting Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>:
>
>>>>> People already are used to finding the shed in the scenery by looking for
>>>>> that original color, however ugly the color might be.  The answer to your
>>>>> question has to become quite different when you take that into account;
>>>>> otherwise you are being irresponsible to your users.
>>>
>>> People somehow got used to the ugly color, they'll get used to the
>>> pretty one, in fact, they would probably like it better,...
>>
>> You do not have to send two messages in a row to reaffirm that you are of
>> irresponsible kind.  I heard you enough already.
>>
>> Go away.
>
> Junio, what got into you?
>
> I've always admired your calm and reasoned way to deal with even the
> most obnoxious people, and unlike more abrasive people on this list I've
> never seen you say "Go away" to anybody here.
>
> Especially because I agree with you that calling pretty-printing as
> "pretty" isn't so broken to make such a big deal out of, it would be
> better not to chase a potentially useful contributor away on such a
> minor issue.

I may try to be more diplomatic than other people, but it does not mean I do not reserve the right to get annoyed enough from time to time.

When you hear people complain, and you take a poll and see there are many people who agree with you, a naive thing to do is to assume that you now got the majority vote. Over time, you will learn that majority were happy, were not complaining, and they merely did not bother to object to the complainers who want to change things. And the last thing you want is to find these things out the hard way by bringing a sudden change to them and giving them something to compalin about, like we did with 1.6.0. You need to learn to take "let's improve this thing, as many people want it" with a huge grain of salt.

This cannot be stressed enough; if somebody is incapable of understanding it, then we would be better off without him or her.

I am not so worried about losing Felipe as a contributor, not because I do not think he is useful, but because I do not think he is stupid.

Judging from his other patches, I think he is reasonably capable and intelligent, but just is not experienced enough with the culture around here, especially about taking the existing users extremely seriously. The first patch landed in the git tree from him was in January 2009---perhaps I should have tried to be more diplomatic with him as a newcomer for a bit longer, but I am reasonably sure that he is smart enough to realize the importance of different acceptance criteria between new features and changes to existing interfaces after having time to think about it for a few days, and will come back.