[drupal-devel] Let's accept more interim solutions

[K B]

I add my voice to Nedjo and Moshe.

I don't want to use labels like conservative and purists, but I have
seen too many ideas shot down because they add options to the site
admin interface.

For example, we removed the "Remember me" option from the login screen
of Drupal, and forced all users to take whatever value that the site
chose to put in settings.php. Now there are people who are asking for
this feature back again.

Another example is an option to disable the printer friendly link from
book pages. While this is not an ideal solution, a followup generic
proposal was rejected (with some good arguments against it), but no
alternative was put forward nor discussed. And hence the main issue
(site admin and themers cannot hide which links show for nodes).

We have to be careful and not be accepting of every idea proposed,
otherwise Drupal will lose its clean and modular nature, and become
another piece of spaghetti code. But we should also be open minded a
bit more than we are now.

----
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 14:48:04 -0400
From: Moshe Weitzman <weitzman at tejasa.com>
Subject: Re: [drupal-devel] Let's accept more interim solutions
To: drupal-devel at drupal.org
Message-ID: <426400E4.1090009 at tejasa.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Nedjo - I have long wanted our project to move in this direction. Thanks
for expressing the idea so eloquently.

Nedjo Rogers wrote:
> I'm thinking we should give more room in Drupal to accepting and applying
> "interim" solutions: contributions that are clear improvements without
> necessarily addressing every conceivable objection.
>
> The high threshold we set for accepting changes has definite benefits--it
> keeps the code clean and functional.  Yet, if the bar is too high, it also
> has significant costs.  It discourages developers and wastes development
> time and expertise on repeated updating.  And, equally importantly, it
> leaves problems unaddressed.
>
> I feel we need to give more weight to the question: what are the costs of
> doing nothing?  Often, these are significant enough to justify implementing
> a partial or interim solution.
>
> Many problems don't lend themselves to full and immediate solution.  Rather,
> building a solution is an iterative process.  Applying more 'first steps' is
> a spur to the development process.  It keeps developers engaged and builds
> momentum for fixing remaining details.
>
> In sum: let's be a bit less conservative, a bit more open to new ideas as
> they come in.  There's nothing sacred about the code base.  It's something
> we collectively build, fixing problems, opening new possibilities (complete
> with their own issues and problems), moving beyond the limitations of the
> inception while staying true to the founding goals and vision.
>
> Nedjo
>