Questions about Property Testing / Stream Data

[josevalim]

@doomspork

I’d like to know this as well. When there are existing tools that do the job and then some, there should be a reasonable argument against them beyond wanting to write all of the code yourself.

That’s literally one of the questions I have answered in the initial post. I mentioned three points in there. To recap:

It is not only about us wanting to write all of the code. All of Elixir is open source and I would say that including a library that is not open source as part of Elixir would go against the openness of the community that you outlined later on in your message. Finally, a solution written in Elixir allows us to better integrate it into the language and provide a more streamlined experience since it works on Elixir data types.

Just compare how Elixir has embraced OTP throughout the years. The fact we decided to make it part of the language instead of delegating to :gen_server (as we did before v1.0) led to the development of modules such as Task and Registry. Sometimes you may need to resort to the Erlang docs but by then you will be familiar with most concepts. This is possible because we took the first step and worked on making our tools mature.

@doomspork

… I applaud @josevalim for taking the step to start these conversations with community. I hope this is not an exception but rather a trend where the core team is proactive in engaging the community and not reactive.

I am glad you enjoyed the discussion although I would say this is an unfair assessment because Elixir development has always been open. As soon as the prototype for stream data was validated and it became clear to us it could bring benefits to Elixir, we had its version announced on both the mailing list and on Elixir Forum. Some of the questions I have answered here were actually asked and answered in the announcement discussion more than 2 months ago, including why we decided to have our own implementation. All other features that could be in the next version of the language are currently listed in the issues tracker and anyone can join the discussion.

So us being proactive is not an exception nor it is a new thing. It has been happening for the last years on the forum, mailing list, events and any other channel where people join and ask, especially because we can’t guess everyone’s concerns and having an open communication has always been the best way to go.

Maybe there is an issue of visibility of information and if that’s the case, we should definitely address it. But I definitely do not agree this thread has “started the conversation with community” because conversations like this one have always been ongoing.

@doomspork

Thanks again for doing this @josevalim. I think it goes without saying but we’re all grateful for the work you’ve done.

Thanks for voicing your concerns!