Re: lacking authority

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From: Martin Ebourne
Subject: Re: lacking authority
Date: 21:38 on 10 Jan 2007
On Wed, 2007-01-10 at 19:46 +0200, Yossi Kreinin wrote:
> So $A is not X in a place located after A=X. Which may seem reasonable if you're 
> used to it. Boy am I happy that I'm not. I couldn't even suspect that. 
> Seriously, why is this good (as opposed to "why does it work that way")?

This occurs similarly in a whole bunch of languages I can think of.

> 1. I do hope you notice a contradiction between your assumption that shells are 
> excellent when you know the basics and your assumption that tcsh is evil, 
> because the people behind tcsh are very likely to be shell experts, so they 
> should have seen the light instead of making a supposedly evil shell.

You assume that the people originally behind tcsh haven't changed their
mind on any of their previous decisions with the benefit of hindsight. I
don't know if they have or not, but even the inventor of vi has admitted
it was a mistake (shame all the vi fanboys don't).

> 2. I don't need the hidden benefits of Unix shells, because I'm happy with the 
> interactive features like command completion and I'm happy with Python as a 
> scripting language. I don't think that the ability to change the environments of 
> buggy program invokations is worth the damage caused to my brain by imprinting 
> the warts of a wierd questionable-purpose programming language.

Sure you don't need them. I'm just saying you'll probably benefit from
them if you try. That's not the same thing at all. I can program half a
dozen languages very well and a dozen or so more to a moderate standard.
They all do different things well in different circumstances. I'm no
python expert but I know it's not god's gift to programmers.

> 3. I wasn't even talking about shells. I wasn't complaining about the lack of an 
> ugly workaround. What I find interesting is the pointless locking of a file. 
> Responses like "Work around it using your shell", and "patch the source" 
> surprise me.

Oh, I agree with you entirely on that point. I didn't respond to the bk
hate because it was fully valid.

Cheers,

Martin.

There's stuff above here

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