Re: Development Speed

[Eli Zaretskii]

On December 21, 2021 6:15:29 AM GMT+02:00, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> I think we sometimes go too fast.  However, I don't think we should
> be putting a priority on making the code smaller.  Most of the time,
> smaller won't do users much good.
> 
> There may be specific areas where some cleaning up would be desirable
> -- what you think of as "paying technical debt".  But we should limit
> that to specific aspects where it could be a big improvement.  Every
> change risks causing new bugs.  I think most cleanups would be
> counterproductive even if they do make cleaner code.  
> 

IMNSHO, there's no such thing as "too fast development".  There's development 
that makes too many mistakes at a too high rate, but that's not what we have in 
Emacs, far from that.

As for the risks of excess cleanups: I share your concern, but if some 
contributor likes cleaning up code, and he/she does a clean job (pun intended), 
it is better to sustain that risk than risking to lose that contributor, who 
might one day proceed to developing new features.