Re: AppleScript and shell scripting
Re: AppleScript and shell scripting
- Subject: Re: AppleScript and shell scripting
- From: "John C. Welch" <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2007 09:49:57 -0500
- Thread-topic: AppleScript and shell scripting
On 7/30/07 09:37 AM, "Bill Briggs" <email@hidden> wrote:
> I know you were just trying to be funny, but keep it real. Computer evolution
> involved the period when RAM was expensive. In those days the careless waste
> of space that would come with the overhead of many levels of abstraction from
> the hardware just wasn't possible. That's the environment C evolved in. If it
> was crap, people would not be programming in it. Fact is that the code is very
> portable and it's not likely to go away any time soon. You might not like it,
> but that's neither here nor there. I intrinsically balk at Java (internal
> loathing of virtual machines that add yet another level of abstraction and
> suck up hardware performance), but Java isn't going away because I don't like
> it. I don't like segment/offset memory address calculation either, but Apple
> switched to Intel and one day I'll probably own an Intel CPU-based Mac. I
> don't like a lot of other things about the Intel CPU internals, but they're
> not going away either.
>
> I don't see any sign on the horizon that Shell scripting is going to evolve
> in a way that you would deem "user friendly", but personally, I don't see it
> as any more difficult than learning any other environment. They all take some
> work, they all require you to build on basics to achieve a level of
> competence, but there is a lot of transferred learning from one to the other,
> so each new one you learn is easier than the last. Sometimes being a
> card-carrying contrarian can impose a barrier for you that's just as big as
> the one imposed by the environment.
It has nothing to do with "user friendly" whatsoever. Programming is never
really going to be that. What it has to do with is people accepting a
primitive toolset, and when the heretical idea is proposed that things
could, and indeed should be better, justifying the primitive toolset.
It's a toolset issue nothing more. The current way of developing shell
hasn't changed appreciably in decades, and I don't see any technical reason
for it other than a host of "Well, that's just how we do things 'round
here". Bah.
--
"First there...that others may live."
USAF 720th Special Tactics Group
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