[fpc-devel] I'll be straight

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Fri, 8 Feb 2019, J. Gareth Moreton wrote:

> I'll be straight here.  Exactly what should I even be looking at and
> working on?  Being self-guided is evidently not cutting it because
> recently, everything I see and think has potential or could use improvement
> has been rejected or dismissed out of hand because it damages
> maintainability, is deemed too risky to even experiment with or touches a
> unit that was derived from a third party source and one doesn't want to
> make changes to it in the name of being able to compare it line-for-line
> (even though the third party source is in C)

No-one stops you from doing this anyway, but you will need to prove that the
replacement code is equally correct or better if you want to get it included. 
The more sensitivethe code, the better the proof must be...

> If I'm the wrong kind of person for this project, I understand, and you
> can boot me out.  What am I but naïve 'new blood' who is overly
> optimistic and doesn't understand risk?

No-one is a priori the wrong kind of person for this (or any) project.
Any software has parts that are more sensitive and less sensitive.
Diving in and starting to tinker with the sensitive parts is of course 
more prone to be met with criticism or reluctance...

I am not familiar with the compiler internals, but executable speed surely
can still be optimized a lot. I'm sure Florian, Sven or Jonas can point to
things that can use some work.

Michael.