Re: [9front] [PATCH] Fix assert macro to not break on commas

[Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net>]

On Sat, Nov 25, 2023 at 03:39:57PM -0500, Dan Cross wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 25, 2023, 3:12 PM Steve Simon <steve@quintile.net> wrote:
> > i strongly agree with kurt.
> >
> > this should go into the fortunes file imho.
> >
> > > Making the language dumber because someone wants to do something stupid
> > > is the wrong plan.
> 
> The statement is factually wrong. The language is already the way that
> it is, and this change just makes a macro useful in more contexts;
> that's not "changing the language" unless someone is adding the
> variadic macro stuff to the compilers to do it.
> 
>         - Dan C.

The statement is not 'factually wrong' according to this argument; it
would instead be irrelevant, which it very well might be.

I suppose this is an opportunity to be pedantic about where the line is
drawn between a language, the implementation of that language, and the
detritus that habitually grows around a language, but it's all
irrelevant, because I don't care.

Doing fancy shit with macros in places where you have the opportunity 
not to do fancy shit with macros is bad.  I know this goes against many
currently-popular dogmas, where we all love to build abstraction castles
into the sky, but there is a difference between making something
convenient and building yet another indirection layer some poor bastard
later has to unravel in order to understand what is happening.

This macro has been fine as it sits for a lot of use.  We have no
convincing demonstrations that this change will enable anything useful
that was not previously possible.  We have no arguments that it will
even make anything more convenient which isn't justifiably difficult at
the moment.  

Finally,I'm doubly suspicious of it because the submitter has a history 
of asshattery and obnoxious behavior in the irc channel.  If this patch
came from some drive-by rando I'd be less opposed to it; instead it
comes from someone with a recent history of willfully refusing to
communicate clearly, and is defended by someone who chose to support it
based on sophistry instead of any clear technical grounds.

I'm not gonna stop anyone from merging anything.  I don't have a dog in
this fight.  But the reasons given suck and further deponent sayeth
trash.

khm