Drastic Prelude changes imminent

[Greg Weber]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 2:17 PM, Mikolaj Konarski <
mikolaj.konarski at gmail.com> wrote:

> > We already have a process that works pretty well. Create a wiki page that
> > specifies the implementation. Notifying every Haskell user is pointless
> if
> > there is no specification for them to look at. I have no idea why the
> > specification step was skipped for this change.
>
> Because code was the shortest specification in this case?
> Or, alternatively, the specification was too vague, as in,
> the most sensible set of changes that make these 5 imports
> coexist without an error? Or because the best specification
> was a set of detailed, readable commit messages that show
> the road from this vague specification to the actual decisions
> and code changes? With lots of time in between for others
> to offer suggestion for subsequent commits and catch problems?
>
> I don't mean there's no communication problem, but specifications
> are not always a solution. Perhaps a wiki page should list the commits,
> as they were created. Or perhaps they were listed somewhere?
>

None of these rhetorical questions are satisfactory.
I understand the need to iterate on a design and start with a vague
specification.
But by the time something concrete is figured out, it should be explained.
Explaining the iteration process with a few of the code examples would
answer a lot of the questions here.
In the end, the changes have been explained many times over now, just not
coherently in one place.
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