[swift-evolution] TrigonometricFloatingPoint/MathFloatingPoint protocol?

[Xiaodi Wu]

On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 7:29 PM, Taylor Swift <kelvin13ma at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 7:54 PM, Xiaodi Wu <xiaodi.wu at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 6:29 PM, Taylor Swift <kelvin13ma at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> See, my problem with statements like this one, is that the answer
>>> “should be supported as a third-party library” can also be interpreted as
>>> “not my problem, go figure it out yourselves”. The idea that central entity
>>> can only pay attention to what they want to, and the Community™ will
>>> magically take care of the rest is one of the most pervasive, and untrue,
>>> myths about open source. What’s worse, is that Swift has the benefit of
>>> hindsight, in the form of many, many examples of languages that came before
>>> and fell victim to this fallacy, and now have 15 competing “private”
>>> classes for basic mathematical objects like *vectors*.
>>>
>>> I agree that a core math library, for example, *could* in theory be
>>> supported as a third-party library.
>>>
>>
>> The core team has said that they're open to a core math library being
>> part of the Swift open source project; they just outlined that the
>> _process_ for doing so is best initiated with a third-party library as a
>> starting point.
>>
>>
>>> But this will never happen on its own, for reasons that I will reiterate
>>> here:
>>>
>>> - no one influential enough has bothered to jump start any such project
>>>
>>
>> Karoly Lorentey has a wonderful, and quite mature, BigInt project: <
>> https://github.com/lorentey/BigInt>. Also, as I mentioned, I just
>> started a project for protocol-based additions to Swift's basic numeric
>> types. These are just two examples.
>>
>>
>>> - there are no avenues to encourage members of the community to come
>>> together and organize a project (look how this thread got derailed!)
>>>
>>
>> You're welcome to join me in my endeavor to create a math library. I'd
>> bet Karoly feels the same way about his project.
>>
>
> You don’t know how happy reading that sentence just made me, i’d assumed
> no one was willing to team up to build such a thing. In which case, it’s a
> good idea to start an incubator organization on Github. I think David
> Turnbull tried doing that 2 years ago, I’ll reach out to him if he wants to
> be a part of something like this.
>
> We should also maintain an index of promising pure swift libraries so they
> are discoverable (like docs.rs does for Rust).
>

I believe there has been mention on this list that the core team would like
to revisit this idea at some point.


>
>>
>>> - there is no “soft” infrastructure in place to support such
>>> collaboration (look at the fuss over discourse and mailing list spam!)
>>>
>>
>> The GitHub environment has excellent tools to support such collaboration,
>> IMO. For example:
>>
>> Based on my experience implementing a library, I wrote a Gist to outline
>> some lessons learned and suggestions for improvement. Not only did the
>> document find an audience, these suggestions were in turn used to inform
>> core team-driven revisions to the integer protocols. As a result of these
>> revisions, it became possible to implement some initializers that could be
>> useful for people writing generic numeric algorithms. Recently, I submitted
>> a PR to the Swift project on GitHub to implement these initializers. Now,
>> everyone will be able to use them. Collaboration, positive feedback loop,
>> win-win for all involved.
>>
>> Likewise, Karoly used his experience updating BigInt for Swift 4 to
>> inform certain improvements to the integer protocols. He implemented these
>> improvements in a series of PRs. Now, as a result of these developments,
>> Karoly's library will be better designed *and* everyone else will benefit
>> from a better implementation of the integer protocols. Again,
>> collaboration, positive feedback loop, win-win for all involved.
>>
>
> Great!! can you link me to the gist?
>

https://gist.github.com/xwu/d68baefaae9e9291d2e65bd12ad51be2


>> - there are no positive feedback loops whereby a promising project can
>>> gain market share and mature
>>> - because there is no organization backing these projects, potential
>>> users are reluctant to depend on these libraries, since they will logically
>>> bet that the library is more likely to fall out of maintenance than reach
>>> maturity.
>>>
>>
>> Addressing this point is clearly impossible. When Apple wishes to commit
>> its own resources to the maintenance of a Swift math library,
>> swift-corelibs-math will appear on GitHub. Suggestions such as opening an
>> empty repo and letting people contribute to it would either give the
>> illusion of organizational backing that doesn't exist or would in fact
>> commit Apple to support a repo that it doesn't wish to support. I fail to
>> see why the former is good for anybody; in fact, it's strictly inferior to
>> the same repo honestly representing itself as a third-party effort. And
>> asking for the latter is essentially asking Apple to create a Swift math
>> library--which, again, is not in the cards.
>>
>
> My point wasn’t really to exhort Apple to create a Swift math library,
> just that people are more willing to depend on a library if the library’s
> bus factor is greater than 1. A lot of great Swift packages in one one guy
> or girl’s github repository who later disappeared. Turnbull’s SGLOpenGL
> library is a good example of this; his library no longer compiles which
> motivated me to write swift-opengl
> <https://github.com/kelvin13/swift-opengl>. Then again, I’m sure people
> feel the same way about depending on swift-opengl today as I felt about
> depending on SGLOpenGL.
>
> There just has so be some semblance of organization. That organization
> doesn’t have to come from Apple or the swift core team. A community
> initiative with sufficient momentum would be just as good. (The problem of
> course is that it is rare for a community initiative to arise.)
>

Well, hang on now. There are plenty of products put out by even major
organizations that are unceremoniously and abruptly cut. There are plenty
of projects worked on by one or a few major people that are long-lived.
Projects that have longevity have some sort of financially sensible model
for their continued existence. Three, thirty, or even 300 unpaid people
working on an open-source project won't make it much more reliable (in the
eyes of others) than one unpaid person, and again I disagree that the
veneer of an organization is superior to presenting the status of the
project honestly. (Example--what is commonly thought to be a bigger threat
to Firefox's continued health: the possibility that there will be a
shortfall in unpaid contributors, or the possibility that there will be a
shortfall in funding?)

Rounding up all the goodwill on this list will not do you any good if your
goal is to convince users that a certain project will be maintained into
the future--because it won't rustle up a single dime. Whether or not you
explicitly equate these in your mind, "backing" == money, and if you want
this point addressed, you're claiming that someone somewhere should be
spending money on a Swift math library. I'm personally committed to making
sure that my code will work for the foreseeable future, but I fully accept
that there's simply no way for me to convince a sufficient number of people
of this fact without a credible showing of funding. In that sense, a
community initiative with "momentum" is decidedly not going to be a
just-as-good alternative to a core library.
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