[Bf-committers] Understanding the dev process

[Jacques Lucke]

Hi Nathan, 

It's really interesting to see all these statements, so thanks for
asking. I agree with the things said already, and just wanted to add one
thing regarding code quality. 

It is well known by now, that in the beginning of the Blender 2.8
project, a lot of technical dept was created. That's the past and cannot
really be changed anymore. What I find more alarming that most commits I
see still create more technical dept (even if they fix bugs). So many
commits add new conditions or extend existing ones, making it more
difficult to reason about the code every time. 

I'd love to see more commits not only fixing bugs but also improving the
quality of code by making it simpler to reason about (that usually boils
down to having small functions with mostly no conditions). Larger
refactors are definitely helpful and I totally support doing more of
those. However, by themselves, they won't make any code simpler. 

I believe that pretty much every function in Blender could be "massaged"
a bit (extracting subfunctions, renaming variables, reducing vertical
scope of variables) to be become a better version of itself. One does
not have to do a big refactor for that. A simple culture in that,
whenever you fix a bug in a function, you also commit one simplification
to the same function, could go a long way. 

In summary, to me there are really two kinds of technical depts: large
scale architecture problems and small problems in every function. Large
refactors solve the first issue over time, but will not solve the
second. The second issue can only be solved when every developers
actively simplifies the code he is working on. I'd love to see this
enforced somehow in the development process, but I don't know how. 

Have a good weekend,
Jacques 

Am 2019-07-04 15:37, schrieb Nathan Letwory: 

> Hey all,
> 
> As you all may know by now I've been asked to help coordinate and manage
> the Blender development.
> 
> To get a better understanding of what these days is going on, and to
> prevent me from just acting through my personal preferences, I'd like to
> hear from the blender developer community how they see the current dev
> process.
> 
> I'm most interested in finding out how devs perceive the process: what goes
> well, and even more so what causes trouble.
> 
> An open discussion by anyone on this topic is of course welcome, but I'd
> like (and also a bit expect) input at least from those who are listed on
> the Modules [1 [1]] page.
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> /Nathan 'jesterKing' Letwory
> 
> [1] https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Modules
> _______________________________________________
> Bf-committers mailing list
> Bf-committers at blender.org
> https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers

  

Links:
------
[1] https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Modules