Re: AppleScript and shell scripting
Re: AppleScript and shell scripting
- Subject: Re: AppleScript and shell scripting
- From: Ed Stockly <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2007 11:18:23 -0700
Non-programmers drawn by an easy to understand programming
language come here and are bombarded with what I consider to be
among the most incomprehensible of computer languages, when they
should be getting the most easily understood computer language.
Whatever the faults of Unix shell languages, the notion that
AppleScript is "the most easily understood computer language" is
absolute bunkum.
I wonder, is that the consensus here on the list? Does everyone agree
that all the work put in to giving AppleScript an English-like syntax
has failed to make it the most easily understood computer language?
What other language allows a novice to sit down with a script and
understand exactly what's happening?
What experience, if any, do you have with languages other than
AppleScript?
Since you asked (and since you seem to dismiss all my concerns as
some kind of syntax phobia):
I wrote programs in Basic on an Apple IIe
20 + years of HyperTalk in HyperCard
Numerous application specific scripting languages, mostly relating to
modems (before appleScript)
Several macro languages including a couple "puppets" like QuickKeys
(again, before AppleScript was available).
Several weekends with Usertalk and Frontier
Two semesters of C/C++ programming at a community college (taught by
a JPL scientist who writes extremely efficient, optimized programs
that are transmitted to spacecraft during their missions)
I can write "Hello World" and slightly more advanced programs in
Pascal and various versions of C
Limited experience with SQL and Small talk
HTML CSS XML
More weekends with Revolution and SuperCard
Several more weekends with terminal shell scripting
In addition I have taught several seminars and classes in Application
Scripting with AppleScript and an introduction to HyperCard scripting.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the 'lean towards AppleScript
where practical' argument, but I'm wondering if your own position
isn't motivated at least in part by a phobia of tools and
techniques you don't understand yourself.
Let me say again, my concern is not that I don't want to see or learn
shell scripting. My concern is that non-programmers who want to learn
appleScript because it's language makes it easy to understand will
come to this list and be overwhelmed with shell scripting. That's it.
And I think that's important.
As I've said, I've referred new users to this list and that's exactly
what happened.
You mean the MACSCRPT mailing list.
<http://listserv.dartmouth.edu/scripts/wa.exe?SUBED1=MACSCRPT&A=1>
By the way, someone mentioned John Delacour, he's on MACSCRPT.
The trouble with MACSCRPT is that it's slowly fallen out of favour
since the move to OS X: questions on AppleScript are better posted
here or at MacScripter.net, while questions on anything else get
taken to more dedicated forums.
This was set up to be a dedicated forum.
There is no "trouble" with MACSCRPT. It doesn't have as much traffic
as this list, but if you ask an AppleScript question or Java Script
or Shell Scripting, you'll get good quality answers.
Thus, the "right" AppleScript solution (using your preferred
choice of regular expression tool) should be something like:
There are plenty of AppleScripters who do not use shell scripting or
regular expressions and have been successfully scripting for years.
To declare that one solution is "right" is the height of arrogance.
Also, while your solution works in situations where it's convenient
and permitted to install third-party software on the end user's macs,
that doesn't work for everyone.
Just going back to the beginning of this absurd thread, it began with
me offering a fairly simple AppleScript alternative to a shell
scripting solution. A week later Mark flamed me and I repeated my
belief that AppleScript and all of us would be better served if this
list was dedicated to the AppleScript language and detailed
discussion of other languages be moved to the MACSCRPT list.
Clearly this thread has touched a nerve in some.
I've had several people communicate with me off-line most supportive,
some, not so much.
Here's where I will leave it, if someone asks a question that I can
answer with a plain vanilla AppleScript answer, I will. I encourage
all AppleScripters to do the same thing.
If I believe new AppleScripters are being mislead into believing that
they must learn shell scripting or do shell is the only way to solve
a problem when that's not the case, I will speak up, and if a shell
scripting thread gets carried away I will encourage people to take it
off line.
From an off-line conversation:
>>>Are you really that concerned about new applScript users? What
new users? It's a dying language and the world is moving on, get over
it!
For those of us who use AppleScript for application scripting and
find the language easy to understand and easy to work with,
particularly non-programmers who use AppleScript as a second
interface, new users are precious. If this technology is going to
thrive, if it's going to be supported by developers and by Apple, we
need new users and we need to support them and help ease them into
the world of AppleScripting.
This list could be the best tool for doing that, but it's been
hijacked by shell scripting and is losing it's effectiveness as a
place to help and encourage new users to learn AppleScript.
ES
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
AppleScript-Users mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
Archives: http://lists.apple.com/archives/applescript-users
This email sent to email@hidden