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by SolaceQuantum 2742 days ago
I'm under the impression that well-described, transparent decision making process has the consequence of increasing cognitive load when it comes to participating in decision making. Given that decision-making in large projects like this is already a significant cognitive load, adding on "did I make the decision following pre-defined process goals" does increase difficulty. Whether or not the tradeoffs are worth it is another decision.
1 comments

Correct that it involves tradeoffs, though having no process at all for making decisions leads to at worst a free-for-all (which can work for small or non-critical projects, but even so be prepared for inevitable drama), or at best an opaque and implicit process as others here have warned about. To use a HN-friendly analogy, it's like static typing vs dynamic typing: you can either accept pain up-front to avoid pain down the road, or vice-versa. The latter is better for massive, established projects and the former is better for young, rapidly-changing projects, so we must consider which of these two better resembles the Python project.
I agree with this, and I'm mostly under the impression that in the case of a benevolent dictator, the benevolent dictator already has a set of processes that are just opaque/implicit. However it is true that in the case of multiple minds (a council) there is latency cost (bureaucracy).
Are your former/latter backwards?