Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 12:29:45 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> Cc: "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@u.washington.edu>, FreeBSD-chat <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG>, Ken Keeler <kkeysler@nwlink.com> Subject: Re: Smaller, Dedicated tools and Greg's Daemon News Article Message-ID: <19981215122945.B15633@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <19981215124855.28247@welearn.com.au>; from Sue Blake on Tue, Dec 15, 1998 at 12:48:55PM %2B1100 References: <19981214083023.C2587@freebie.lemis.com> <Pine.BSF.4.05.9812132318160.6577-100000@s8-37-26.student.washington.edu> <19981214201953.52678@welearn.com.au> <19981215111225.O17075@freebie.lemis.com> <19981215124855.28247@welearn.com.au>
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On Tuesday, 15 December 1998 at 12:48:55 +1100, Sue Blake wrote: > On Tue, Dec 15, 1998 at 11:12:25AM +1030, Greg Lehey wrote: >> On Monday, 14 December 1998 at 20:19:53 +1100, Sue Blake wrote: >>> On Sun, Dec 13, 1998 at 11:29:40PM -0800, Jason C. Wells wrote: >>>> I spent the entire weekend doing battle with Microsoft products. We >>>> produced a 400 page report using the bastard Word 97. Easily 20 full man >>>> hours were spent trying to figure why there were big red X's where >>>> pictures used to be and recovering files that were corrupted during >>>> crashes. We could not put together more than 20MB/200 pages of text before >>>> complete instability occured. >>>> >>>> What a horrible waste of time. >>>> >>>> Oh yeah, don't forget that little paper clip sucker in the right corner. >>>> Good thing I didn't have my gun. I'da shot the futhermocker right in his >>>> litte winky eye. >>>> >>>> Imagine trying to put together "The Complete FreeBSD" in this environment. >>>> >>>> The point is, I know how well small dedicated tools work. I haven't >>>> learned the text editing tools because I was never motivated to do so. >>>> >>>> A recent email chat combined with Greg's article have completely convinced >>>> me that I should learn a little bit more programming in order to make my >>>> life easier. >>>> >>>> Emacs, Tex, here I come! >>> >> >>> Greg will scowl from his perch, but even the simplest programming is >>> beyond me at the moment. There are other ways, though. First a tale >>> of woe. >> >> [Illustrative story omitted] >> >> No, you don't understand. Well, I suspect you do understand, but >> you're pretending not to. The article in question was not about >> programming, it was about control. You have wrested control in the >> manner I was advocating. > > My point exactly. We do similar things for similar reasons but we > attribute success differently. You advocate programming as the way to > wrest control. Not the main point, but enough to make me very nervous. No, you still don't want to understand. > I start by typing 'cat notes.txt' and notes.txt contains all the > commands I'm afraid of forgetting. I could just as well type 'sh > notes.txt' and then you'd attribute what I was doing to programming, > which would scare the bejeebers out of me. Next you'd be expecting me > to get all tangled up on those loopy things with punctuation and dollar > signs spitting out everywhere and I'd be losing control, not gaining > it. Then I'd run away and look for comfort in less efficient methods > that I _can_ control. Anything but programming! And I'd still end up > doing the same as what you're advocating. OK, what you're discussing are your personal fears. That has nothing to do with programming, only with your perception of programming. >> If you had needed a little program (never played with PERL?), > > You know I have. It's not comfortable because I don't understand every > part of it. Hardly any, actually. It robs me of control. You're spot on > about the motivator, but one person's tool is another's strait-jacket. Well, in fact *I* can't write PERL, and that's one of the reasons. It's a nasty little language, as near as I can tell, but now it's anchored in the Web, I suppose I'm going to have to learn it. Still, you can't gain control without first going to some effort. That's exactly the reason that Microslop is so successful with its ``don't worry about the details, we'll take care of them for you'' approach. But you can't say that you don't like that with Wart (as you did above) and then turn around and say that you don't want the alternative either. >> you could have written one to play around with >> your RTF stuff, and you probably would have. The thing is that the >> *ability* to program is part of your control. > > Not as much as you might think. My inability to program, in most cases, > is what fires me to look for and invent better solutions that I can > cope with on my own. Then nobody can scare me away by expecting > me to have skills I haven't got. > > Sure, the only differences between what you and I are saying are in > semantics and gut reactions. Don't underestimate their potency. As a > non-programmer who is easily frightened, in order to claim your > approach as my own I have to deny that programming is an essential > element. I never said it was an essential element. But if you don't have it, you have less control. The ability to run diff against your RTF is part of the same continuum. Your gut just chooses to react differently to loops and variable dereferences, although at the level we're talking about a variable dereference is conceptually the same thing as running a program. Greg -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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