Re: [PATCH 1/9] remote-bzr: trivial cleanups

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 26, 2013, 20:46 UTC
Message-ID: <CAMP44s1J1c7YfKZRwU6RwE8k1jFUvC_j77xQ-rzstvJimkxj_w@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CALkWK0kTf_U3NMLTXS-spW-TbZ2x6-46EyEQtD6ZrZK2Tw-91w@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 3:28 PM, Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

>> Reason is not a tool for appreciating art, reason is a tool for
>> discovering truth, and if when arguing you are not interested in what
>> is actually true, I'm not interested in arguing with you.
>
> There is no great truth to be discovered by arguing about the length
> of commit messages, Felipe.  There are some "guidelines" or "axioms"
> upon which we build reason.

And based on what do you build these guidelines and axioms if not truth? Do you ask a computer to throw a number randomly from 0 to infinite and that shall be the new axiom for what the perfect number of words a commit message should have?

No, you determine that based on experience, and convenience. You find a number that convenient to write, not hundreds of pages, and a number that would help the reader if the patch in case a bug in the changes is found on a later time, and that would help reviewers of code find issues, and understand it. But most importantly, the number depends on the complexity of the code changes. Note that I'm not saying on size, because even one-liners can be extremely complex.

It's not arbitrary.

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> If you want to argue till everything
> breaks down to Peano's Axioms, do Foundations of mathematics or
> Analytical philosophy.  From personal experience, it's much more
> satisfying than arguing with other humans (who aren't exact
> creatures).

I do not want to argue the fundamentals of logic and reason, but unfortunately most people don't have a strong grasp on them.

So let me simply; truth matters, and how we find truth mattes. Which is why the degree of certainty we have on certain facts matters; you shouldn't act the same about a claim you are 10% sure it's true, than with a claim you are 90% sure.

If you are 100% sure my commit messages are too short, then there's no point in arguing with you. Nor if you think it doesn't matter if it's 90%, or 50%, or even 0%. Because it's an opinion, and an opinion doesn't need any facts, or certainty, it just needs a person to hold it, whatever unreasonable or unlikely it is.

Show 5 quoted lines

>> I appreciate your criticism, but that doesn't mean I must agree with
>> it. And if I do agree, that doesn't mean I must act upon it.
>
> Why not?  Am I being unreasonable in asking you to justify your
> changes, so I can understand what you've done with one quick reading?

I did justify everything, I just didn't act the way you wanted. I didn't immediately resend the series with a full description of the changes, because the changes, as I described before, are trivial. I simply dropped the change you had a problem with, and moved on. It's perfectly reasonable.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras