Drastic Prelude changes imminent

[Gershom B]

On January 28, 2015 at 5:57:56 AM, Simon Peyton Jones (simonpj at microsoft.com) wrote:
> > Just to be clear, this isn't my proposal: it's from Lennart and  
> Neil. They did come to see me; I had indeed entirely missed the  
> fact that the Prelude was changing so much; I did encourage them  
> to explicitly and clearly air their concerns. But I don't feel  
> ready to take a personal position on how best to move forward.  

Thanks for the clarity Simon. Apologies for contributing to noise by a sloppy reading of earlier messages in this thread.

I’ve been advocating that it is important that a FAQ be written up on the BBP to make the maze of (careful) choices more understandable to a lay audience. That will at least help the discussion to not repeatedly cover the same ground. If nobody else manages to step in and do it, I’ll see what I can get done myself in the next few days.

Cheers,
Gershom

> I very much value what the Core Libraries Committee does. Good  
> libraries are a foundational component of a language and, although  
> it's not very glamourous, working on making the libraries (particularly  
> the core ones) work smoothly is incredibly valuable. So we all  
> owe huge thank you to the Core Libraries Committee.
>  
> It's unfortunate that all this has arisen so late in the 7.10 release  
> cycle. Perhaps I should have been paying more attention. Perhaps  
> the CLC should have published the proposal, and with clearer  
> signposting. Perhaps Lennart and Neil should have been more  
> vocal earlier. But it's unproductive to discuss who to blame,  
> and we probably all carry some responsibility. (We might want  
> to learn some lessons for the future, though; one being that changes  
> to the Prelude need particular care and advertising.)
>  
> More important is what to do next. Let's talk about how to resolve  
> this during this week. A small group of us (including Edward K  
> and Lennart) plan to have a Skype call on Monday. But the more we  
> have a clear set of alternatives, the better.
>  
> Simon