Re: Lets prohibit predicting the future in the documentation.

On Thu, Jul 31, 2025 at 5:03 AM David Rowley <dgrowleyml(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> On Thu, 31 Jul 2025 at 14:17, David G. Johnston
> <david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> >
> > Came across this again today...we added, way back in v11:
> >
> > "This limitation will likely be removed in a future version of
> <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>."
> >
> > https://www.postgresql.org/docs/18/sql-createstatistics.html
>
> This sort of thing doesn't particularly upset me. I don't believe we
> should hide the fact that certain features might need more work. If it
> inspires someone to work on making improvements, wouldn't it be
> worthwhile keeping these? A huge amount of stuff gets done around here
> because people find some inspiration to make things better. I don't
> believe all those people need to experience the problems first-hand to
> be able to fix them. Plenty of people arrive here just looking to get
> involved and make a difference. I presume that something like this
> being mentioned in the docs likely has a much better "we actually want
> this feature" ratio than the TODO list does. I also imagine it's more
> likely to inspire users of PostgreSQL to get involved in developing
> than the TODO list is.
>
> -1 from me.
>

I can agree that the "will likely be removed" is a bad wording, and clearly
it was wrong :) But something like "could be removed" would convey the
important message that it is not a limitation of the concept itself, it's
just something that hasn't been done yet -- and would perhaps encourage
exactly the sort of thing yuo'r suggesting. Where as "will likely be
removed" almost sounds like someone is already working on it.

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: https://www.hagander.net/ <http://www.hagander.net/>
Work: https://www.redpill-linpro.com/ <http://www.redpill-linpro.com/>