From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Nov 21 15:57:25 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id PAA27487 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 21 Nov 1996 15:57:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au [129.127.96.120]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id PAA27478 for ; Thu, 21 Nov 1996 15:57:19 -0800 (PST) Received: (from msmith@localhost) by genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (8.8.2/8.7.3) id KAA15374; Fri, 22 Nov 1996 10:24:56 +1030 (CST) From: Michael Smith Message-Id: <199611212354.KAA15374@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Subject: Re: Who needs Perl? We do! In-Reply-To: <199611212009.NAA13774@phaeton.artisoft.com> from Terry Lambert at "Nov 21, 96 01:09:31 pm" To: terry@lambert.org (Terry Lambert) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 10:24:55 +1030 (CST) Cc: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, davidn@sdev.usn.blaze.net.au, terry@lambert.org, roberto@keltia.freenix.fr, hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL28 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Terry Lambert stands accused of saying: > > It's not a question of whether _everyone_ needs it, but whether a > > sufficient number of people need it. I think that so far the evidence > > indicates that this is the case. > > Not _everyone_ needs an appendectomy. > > But perhaps a _suficient_ number of people need them, so we should > remove everyone's appendix at age 6. Oh please; I think you can do better than that. p -> q <=/=> !p -> !q Perhaps "Not everyone needs tetanus immunisation, but it helps a lot of people, so we immunise at age 6". If further research shows that immunisation sucks, then we can stop. > > I'm entirely in agreement with the basic principle, but I strongly > > believe that we need to incorporate mature and ubiquitous tools in > > as seamless and standard a fashion as possible. > > This is a different argument entirely... it is a complaint that the > installation dependency process is insufficiently seamless. No it is _not_. Any statically-configured system is vulnerable to variation in usage pattern; the simple intent here is to cover more of the possible requirements in the out-of-the-box configuration in a reasonable fashion. > Terry Lambert -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control. (ph) +61-8-8267-3493 [[ ]] Unix hardware collector. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[