David Abrahams wrote:
On Behalf Of Jonathan Turkanis:
I'm one of those people who feels I must put a lot of work into a review. For the FSM review I broke this policy and wrote a review even though I had only studied the documentation. My review was negative; it was basically a list of what I considered to be shortcomings of the library.
I ended up getting into an unpleasant exchange with the library author, who repeatedly challenged me to suggest concrete changes to the design to fix the perceived problems. I had examined the library more thoroughly, my guess is that I would have been able to suggest improvements. I don't blame the library author in this case; it's only natural to ask for an alternate design when you are told that your design is flawed;
Maybe, but you shouldn't feel guilty. The onus is on the proposer to come up with a good design.
I don't feel guilty. The episode left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Jonathan