[Users] That won't work.

[Dave Howorth]

On Tue, 13 Oct 2020 17:23:01 +1100
Liz <edodd at billiau.net> wrote:

> This discussion appears to be going nowhere.
> 
> This is described in psychology in two different ways.
> 
> 1. One person invests in one attack on a problem and doesn't want to
> throw away what they have invested (whether money, goods or time) but
> pours more of the same effort into the same solution. An English
> phrase refers to throwing good money after bad.

I kind of see what you're saying, but I'm not sure I fully agree. The
difficulty for those of us trying to explain the problem is that we're
describing what to us is a well-known coding flaw with well-known
solutions, but the audience has apparently never heard of the problem,
or denies it is worth fixing and basically say "don't use it then".

Incidentally, I just tried to google for a good general description of
the problem but my google-fu isn't finding anything today. Do any of
the 'believers' know of a page that discusses the topic?

> 2. Once there is a dispute there is a tendency for each side to defend
> their position, and strengthen it.

I think you're definitely right about this point.

> I think the best thing to do is for everyone to desist and allow some
> time to pass, and allow everyone time to think about the initial
> problem and potential solutions.

I do agree with you about this conclusion. While the time passes my
thinking was to actually read the code and identify exactly what I
expect to be the very simple change we're asking for.

At the moment I'm having trouble finding the right place (file even!)
in the source code where these user-supplied commands get invoked. Can
any of the devs point me to the right file, please, or to some
description of the code that would let me find it myself?

Thanks, Dave

> Liz