Re: Paul and I (Was: POSIX_ME_HARDER)

[Akim Demaille]

[I have tried to send the following messages a few days ago, as an
answer to myself.  But for some reason, the message it answers to had
lost bison-patches from the To: and Cc:, and therefore I missed its
sending.  Because *I want its content to be public*, I'm sending it
again now.]

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I would like to make clear that I greatly appreciate working with Paul
Eggert.  I'm French, and it seems that, according to foreigners,
French people tend to debate too harshly, express their opinions in a
way that can hurt.  I certainly do fit this stereotype (at least says
my mum).

Paul has helped me in numerous situations, on main stream projects
including Autoconf and Bison, on more personal programs, and sometimes
just by taking the time to satisfy my curiosity.  He spent a
significant time educating me about Algol's history, or SmallTalk
programming style, or computer architecture etc. etc.  One needs to be
a truly nice person to spend some time like this instead of just
rtfw'ing me, as I often deserve.

On occasions, he and I have diverging opinions, for the benefit of our
common projects I think.  In particular because Paul is much more
rigorous than I am, is a better programmer, knows better about
standards --which we ought to follow etc.  In many respect we are
complementary, or I like to imagine there is some room in his
complement for me to be in :)

I am happy that Paul took his responsibilities wrt Bison when I was
gone.  I'm furiously (remember? I'm French) against some changes, but
I am in debt with Paul for fixing bugs I introduced before I left.  I
do not want to change the way we work together: we are equal wrt the
repositories of Bison and Autoconf.