Re: stepping down as project manager

[David Kastrup]

Graham Percival <address@hidden> writes:

> I guess it's time to make it official: I'm stepping down as
> project manager.  I'll stick around for a while to review patches
> on countdowns and participate in policy discussions, but don't be
> surprised if I'm gone for good in a few months.

[...]

> For most of 2012 I haven't been doing much with LilyPond, and in
> the past few weeks I've been doing even less -- but I find that I
> don't miss it.  I've made some good friends while working on
> LilyPond, and Waltrop was great.  I was really fired up about
> LilyPond when I left.  But sadly the warm feelings from that
> meeting vanished rather quickly, and I was left feeling even more
> jaded than I had earlier in the year.

I think part of the problem here is that your focus is on organizing
human resources, and the resources we have are quite diversified in the
amount of direction they want or can usefully take, and at the current
point of time, there is not an overabundance available.  So we have a
slightly counterintuitive situation similar to well-off parents of a
single child who are totally fired up about the idea of best raising
their child.  Whether or not they are doing this with the intent of not
spoiling it, any effective level of "not spoiling" comes across as
artificially inflicted, and that makes the single child unhappier than a
child with 8 siblings where the parents' attention is just able to deal
with the emergencies, and the parents are not as much in the situation
of not _wanting_ to indulge any particular child, but simply being
unable to do so.

The high management art of "leaving good enough alone" is quite harder
to do when there is not a pile of "not good enough" knocking down the
gates.  Now while we might not have piles of not good enough knocking
down the gates for the simple reason that we don't really have piles of
anything, we do have a fair share that definitely takes well to the
organizational work you are good at.

So there are definitely areas in LilyPond that will take a hit from your
leaving.

> Ultimately, I haven't used lilypond for my own music since 2004.
> I was hoping that I could get fired up about my old pieces if I
> could create a final version with a nice stable syntax, but that
> hasn't happened.  After I'm finished my phd, I'll do the thing
> which every computer science student should do at least once in
> their life: I'll make my own language.  I'm not comfortable with
> the level of abstractions that lilypond offers.

That's rather abstract.  Is the level too high or low for you?

> Just like different programming languages make it easier (or harder)
> to write certain types of programs, a different sheet music language
> would make it easier to express the type of music that I write.

I doubt that the best answer lies outside of LilyPond.  Take a look at
the TeX/LaTeX ecosystem: it has evolved almost exclusively _inside_ of
the programming model offered by TeX, and this programming model is
worse than autoconf macros.  LilyPond, in contrast, has workable
underpinnings.

Whatever wrappers you put around LilyPond, they won't be able to work
with abstractions that can easily be made to work inside of LilyPond,
either using existing frameworks or creating new frameworks in Scheme
with a level of effort not significantly different from doing it in
Python.  You might personally be more comfortable to use Python on a
rapid prototyping level.  Part of the reason is that LilyPond's design
does not really embrace Scheme's and Guile's facilities fully, and part
of the reason is that the programming infrastructure is in its infancy.

Now your goal is to get back at actually _using_ LilyPond and
typesetting music, and my goal when I started seriously getting involved
with LilyPond was typesetting accordion music.  And while LilyPond has
made great strides under my work, it is hard to deny that with regard to
my purported original goal, I have not really been all that productive.

I am still working on making LilyPond more fun and versatile to work
with rather than actually working with LilyPond.

So I am hardly in the position to state that your choices are wrong for
your own, personal goals.  I just don't see them leading in a direction
useful for LilyPond itself.  Whatever you think useful outside of
LilyPond would likely be even more useful inside, and if it is not
feasible to get it there, it probably should.

So it may even be that your private project, as a way of showcasing your
needs and solutions better than theoretic discussions, will provide
inspiration for core LilyPond work.

> The schedule for me leaving isn't at all fixed, but I imagine that
> I'd be ok with spending 1-2 hours a week for months or even years
> to come.  The most important thing would be to keep it easy to
> participate meaningfully with only a small amount of time.

The funny thing is that if your time allotment is such that you really
can only bother about things seriously veering off-course or going
wrong, you might be both more satisfied with your achievements as well
as more effective.

There is a computer science saying "premature optimization is the root
of all evil", and in a manner, this is not dissimilar to some parts of
development.  Trying to pin down decisions before the required knowledge
and experience are available does not make things easier.  Yes, it may
mean that one might need to scrap and redo at some point of time.  It is
a price that can't be ultimately avoided.

All the best, in any case, and hopefully we can still, some way or
other, make LilyPond go where you want to be.

-- 
David Kastrup