Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 00:10:46 -0600 From: Kevin Kinsey <kdk@daleco.biz> To: Marc Ramirez <marc.ramirez@bluecirclesoft.com> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: teco added to ports - Fwd: FreshPorts daily new ports Message-ID: <421EC166.5080303@daleco.biz> In-Reply-To: <200502242303.08462.marc.ramirez@bluecirclesoft.com> References: <200502250357.j1P3vG8U000929@mist.nodomain> <200502242303.08462.marc.ramirez@bluecirclesoft.com>
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> > >On Thu, 2005-02-17 at 19:18 -0800, Joshua Tinnin wrote: > > >>Wow ... teco is finally in FreeBSD ports. Now I have the option of >>easily installing an editor that causes ulcers and premature aging even >>faster than ed does! >> Marc Ramirez wrote: >TECO is worthless. I'm holding out for EDT. > >Marc. > > And not the Emacs emulation, I suppose? ROFL. But surely you and highly informed and aware of the allure of TECO. (If you've read the "Real Programmers" stuff and have work to do, just delete this one now....) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Text Editing In some companies, text editing no longer consists of ten engineers standing in line to use an 029 keypunch. In fact, the building I work in doesn't contain a single keypunch. The Real Programmer in this situation has to do his work with a "text editor" program. Most systems supply several text editors to select from, and the Real Programmer must be careful to pick one that reflects his personal style. Many people believe that the best text editors in the world were written at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center for use on their Alto and Dorado computers [3]. Unfortunately, no Real Programmer would ever use a computer whose operating system is called SmallTalk, and would certainly not talk to the computer with a mouse. Some of the concepts in these Xerox editors have been incorporated into editors running on more reasonably named operating systems - EMACS and VI being two. The problem with these editors is that Real Programmers consider "what you see is what you get" to be just as bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in women. No the Real Programmer wants a "you asked for it, you got it" text editor - complicated, cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous. TECO, to be precise. It has been observed that a TECO command sequence more closely resembles transmission line noise than readable text [4]. One of the more entertaining games to play with TECO is to type your name in as a command line and try to guess what it does. Just about any possible typing error while talking with TECO will probably destroy your program, or even worse - introduce subtle and mysterious bugs in a once working subroutine. For this reason, Real Programmers are reluctant to actually edit a program that is close to working. They find it much easier to just patch the binary object code directly, using a wonderful program called SUPERZAP (or its equivalent on non-IBM machines). This works so well that many working programs on IBM systems bear no relation to the original FORTRAN code. In many cases, the original source code is no longer available. When it comes time to fix a program like this, no manager would even think of sending anything less than a Real Programmer to do the job - no Quiche Eating structured programmer would even know where to start. This is called "job security". (Copied from the first hit at Google.) Kevin Kinsey
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