This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
Subject: Re: Linux (x server) stability From: Nick Moffitt <nick@zork.net> Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 14:22:17 -0800 begin Deirdre Schmeirdre quotation: > (Can't you indent normally? Geez) Oh yeah. This coming from a PYTHON programmer. Goddamn, talk about a language that's hostile to cutting and pasting! === Subject: Re: Linux (x server) stability From: Deirdre Saoirse <deirdre@deirdre.net> Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 14:48:49 -0800 (PST) On Mon, 10 Jan 2000, Nick Moffitt wrote: > begin Deirdre Schmeirdre quotation: > > (Can't you indent normally? Geez) > > Oh yeah. This coming from a PYTHON programmer. I assure you that all my indentation IS normal. :) Unlike the rest of me. :) > Goddamn, talk about a language that's hostile to cutting and > pasting! That's what Shift-Control-9 and 0 are for dude! === Subject: Re: Linux (x server) stability From: Nick Moffitt <nick@zork.net> Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 14:56:21 -0800 begin Deirdre Schmeirdre quotation: > > Goddamn, talk about a language that's hostile to cutting and > > pasting! > > That's what Shift-Control-9 and 0 are for dude! What sort of EMACS villainy is this? === Subject: Re: Linux (x server) stability From: Deirdre Saoirse <deirdre@deirdre.net> Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 15:25:00 -0800 (PST) On Mon, 10 Jan 2000, Nick Moffitt wrote: > begin Deirdre Schmeirdre quotation: > > > Goddamn, talk about a language that's hostile to cutting and > > > pasting! > > > > That's what Shift-Control-9 and 0 are for dude! > > What sort of EMACS villainy is this? What's emacs? ;) === Subject: Re: Linux (x server) stability From: Deirdre Saoirse <deirdre@deirdre.net> Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 16:30:44 -0800 (PST) On Mon, 10 Jan 2000, J C Lawrence wrote: > On Mon, 10 Jan 2000 14:04:51 -0800 (PST) > Deirdre Saoirse <deirdre@deirdre.net> wrote: > > > I always get ssh from the source. Call me paranoid. > > Only if you also check the signatures. Actually, I do. === Subject: Re: Linux (x server) stability From: J C Lawrence <claw@cp.net> Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 16:29:39 -0800 On Mon, 10 Jan 2000 14:22:17 -0800 Nick Moffitt <nick@zork.net> wrote: > begin Deirdre Schmeirdre quotation: >> (Can't you indent normally? Geez) > Oh yeah. This coming from a PYTHON programmer. > Goddamn, talk about a language that's hostile to cutting and > pasting! Ahem. Are you suggesting that cut'n'pasted code which breaks the indentation pattern of the target source is acceptable? Really? <blech> Of course Emacs handles all this quite elegantly, with two key strokes redenting the block appropriately... === Subject: Languages... From: Ray Dillinger <bear@sonic.net> Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 18:36:16 -0800 (PST) On Mon, 10 Jan 2000, Nick Moffitt wrote: >begin Deirdre Schmeirdre quotation: >> (Can't you indent normally? Geez) > > Oh yeah. This coming from a PYTHON programmer. > > Goddamn, talk about a language that's hostile to cutting and >pasting! I use LISP (Scheme, actually) but I don't like the built-in EMACS indentation for it -- uses too much horizontal space, in my opinion. And one of these days, I'm going to create a new scheme-mode in my EMACS to correct it. How many people out there use/prefer non-C languages for coding? === Subject: Re: Languages... From: Nick Moffitt <nick@zork.net> Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 19:28:26 -0800 begin David Welton quotation: > Different languages are good for different things... I would hope that > everyone uses a variety... Yes, of course. > Perl is good for text processing. In my mind, people resort to Perl far too quickly where awk would do. I only ever use Perl where awk and the shell have failed me. Actually, if I can't do it in awk, I try gawk next. gawk is huge. === Subject: Re: Languages... From: David Fetter <shackle@start.david-fetter.com> Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 19:40:48 -0800 (PST) Ray Dillinger wrote: > How many people out there use/prefer non-C languages for coding? Perl lets people get stuff done on time and without excuses. I've met a few people who can eventually make C code that runs faster, but those wizards are few and far between, and none who beat the development cycle of a runtime-compiled language. </rant> :) My $.02! Mine! === Subject: Re: Languages... From: Ray Dillinger <bear@sonic.net> Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 09:42:21 -0800 (PST) On Mon, 10 Jan 2000, David Welton wrote: >On Mon, Jan 10, 2000 at 06:36:16PM -0800, Ray Dillinger wrote: > >> How many people out there use/prefer non-C languages for coding? > <snip> > >Perl is good for text processing. Text processing is one thing I actually prefer a different language (other than Scheme, in my case) for. The whole regular-expression matching thing, with useful side effects such as setting matching buffers, is not something that can really be expressed cleanly in Scheme -- I mean, you can do it, but it's going to be ugly. >Scheme is good if you want to tell everyone on newsgroups how superior >your language is, yet never sully it with real world applications;-PPP >No, I'm kidding, Scheme is really neat, but unfortunately tends to be >dominated by the accademic world, which is more interested in getting >things absolutely perfect than in getting a working standard, it >seems... Scheme has no standard module or object system. My major frustration with it is that it's dominated by inefficient or inadequate implementations -- the reason you don't see too many real-world applications in it IMO, is because the language implementors have not yet provided the kind of facilities in terms of speed and low-level hardware access that are required to effectively write drivers and control graphics/audio hardware in realtime. Module and object systems, if you want em, you can code in one day and use forever. Seriously, the syntax extension mechanisms and metafunctions make it dreadfully easy to do. A standard would be nice, so you could reuse bits of code that were written in a *different* system -- but that's not a really pressing problem to me. The low-level stuff, on the other paw, is a real problem. If it's not there you can't easily make it. It's one of the easiest languages to write a compiler/ interpreter for, but one of the hardest to write a really *GOOD* compiler/interpreter for. >C is the only (convenient) way to do a lot of low level stuff, and >everything's written in it... Yeah. This is because nobody will accept a C/C++ implementation that doesn't provide low-level access to everything, and the C library definitions provide standard ways to do that access. >Everything, of course, boils down to ASM and ones and zeros... Yeah, it does. And you could run a marathon on your knees too. :-) === Subject: Re: Languages... From: David Welton <davidw@master.debian.org> Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 12:18:32 -0600 On Tue, Jan 11, 2000 at 09:42:21AM -0800, Ray Dillinger wrote: > >Perl is good for text processing. > Text processing is one thing I actually prefer a different language > (other than Scheme, in my case) for. > The whole regular-expression matching thing, with useful side > effects such as setting matching buffers, is not something that can > really be expressed cleanly in Scheme -- I mean, you can do it, but > it's going to be ugly. In various language war discussions, I've heard Icon, as some sort of relative of SNOBOL, has things that Perl is just now getting or still doesn't have... But I still use Perl. > >Scheme is good if you want to tell everyone on newsgroups how > >superior your language is, yet never sully it with real world > >applications;-PPP No, I'm kidding, Scheme is really neat, but > >unfortunately tends to be dominated by the accademic world, which > >is more interested in getting things absolutely perfect than in > >getting a working standard, it seems... Scheme has no standard > >module or object system. > My major frustration with it is that it's dominated by inefficient > or inadequate implementations -- the reason you don't see too many > real-world applications in it IMO, is because the language > implementors have not yet provided the kind of facilities in terms > of speed and low-level hardware access that are required to > effectively write drivers and control graphics/audio hardware in > realtime. Well, can you really do that with a true implementation of scheme? I mean, you can't stop and garbage collect while you are outputting to the screen. > Module and object systems, if you want em, you can code in one day > and use forever. Seriously, the syntax extension mechanisms and > metafunctions make it dreadfully easy to do. A standard would be > nice, so you could reuse bits of code that were written in a > *different* system -- but that's not a really pressing problem to > me. Well, it is to a lot - I'd say the majority - of the people using a "mid-level" languages (which, as you say, Scheme is at this point). Python has an extensive standard library, Perl has CPAN, Tcl has quite a bit written for it. > The low-level stuff, on the other paw, is a real problem. If it's > not there you can't easily make it. > It's one of the easiest languages to write a compiler/ > interpreter for, but one of the hardest to write a > really *GOOD* compiler/interpreter for. Unfortunately, people seem to expend more 'horizontal' energy with Scheme. There are a lot of competing implementations, but none really seem to stand above the crowd. They all seem to have some neat feature that the others may lack, but instead of trying to integrate, and build on the work of others, Not Inventented Here seems to reign within the Scheme community. But that's just my somewhat biased and possibly not terribly well informed opinion:-) === Subject: Re: Languages... From: J C Lawrence <claw@cp.net> Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 12:24:53 -0800 On Mon, 10 Jan 2000 21:17:36 -0600 David Welton <davidw@master.debian.org> wrote: > On Mon, Jan 10, 2000 at 06:36:16PM -0800, Ray Dillinger wrote: >> How many people out there use/prefer non-C languages for coding? > Different languages are good for different things... I would hope > that everyone uses a variety... Too true. > Tcl has an excellent C API, and is a great 'little language', > especially for tying together bits of C, or to embed in C programs > as a control language. Actually this is my main use of Python now -- as an embedded scripting language in other tools and applications. As far sa a glue language is concerned, that tends to be a mix of Python, shell, and Tcl (in descending order). > Perl is good for text processing. I manage to avoid it almost religiously. My general statement is that I'll be willing to actively use perl when someone produces an accurate and usable EBNF for it...(which I guess defines which side of the classical language definition fence I'm on). > Scheme is good if you want to tell everyone on newsgroups how > superior your language is, yet never sully it with real world > applications;-PPP No, I'm kidding, Scheme is really neat, but > unfortunately tends to be dominated by the accademic world, which > is more interested in getting things absolutely perfect than in > getting a working standard, it seems... Scheme has no standard > module or object system. Frankly I'd rather use one of the functional languages than most list-derivatives. > Ok, if that doesn't get a "lively discussion" going, I don't know > what will;-) A few more useful languages you miss which I find useful (without trying to be exhaustive): E -- http://www.erights.org/ Eiffel -- http://www.eiffel.com/ Lua -- http://csg.uwaterloo.ca/~lhf/lua/home.html Squeak/Smalltalk -- http://squeak.org/ TOM -- http://www.gerbil.org/tom/ Eiffel is just gorgeous. E and TOM are particularly interesting with the capability based design of E making it just a delight for certain problems. === Subject: Re: Languages... From: David Welton <davidw@master.debian.org> Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 14:35:43 -0600 please don't CC me, I read the list. ] On Wed, Jan 12, 2000 at 10:44:41AM -0800, Joe Brenner wrote: > Have to say I'm really getting tired of hearing from the Python > fanatics. At this point, if I was going to take the trouble to > learn something knew, I'd rather it were really new (something like > Scheme would be a thought). Hmm, I wouldn't call myself a fanatic. I enjoy and use a lot of different languages... I can't get *too* religious about it, like I can with some things. I got my first computer job because of my perl knowledge, and it was the first language I was able to do serious work with. That said, having 'matured' in my tastes, I have become increasingly frustrated with the bloat, cruftiness, and in some cases unclean ways of Perl. Python isn't perfect, but it just seems like a cleaner design in a variety of ways. There is a clean, distinct core, and a big variety of extensions that you can call in as needed, not a core that has haphazardly grown to encompass a collection of tools on a unix box (Perl is a great quick and dirty replacement for that amalgamation of tools, but it's when your programs start to grow that it gets icky...). There are multiple ways to do things in Python, but the language doesn't encourage doing things in really wacky ways. > (Down with the whitespace fascists.) Down with overuse of $ & * % @, etc....;-) Or parenthesis, if you want to use Scheme... === Subject: Re: Languages... From: Nick Moffitt <nick@zork.net> Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 12:44:27 -0800 begin David Welton quotation: > I got my first computer job because of my perl knowledge, and it was > the first language I was able to do serious work with. That said, > having 'matured' in my tastes, I have become increasingly frustrated > with the bloat, cruftiness, and in some cases unclean ways of Perl. Likewise. I actually learned Unix properly through Perl. Perl is (as you stated later on) an amalgamation of all the little utilities and tools that make Unix what it is. Perl has function calls that sometimes directly equate to Unix utilities. So I learned Perl several years ago, and then realized that I knew shell and awk programming as a result. Now I only ever use Perl when shell and awk programming isn't powerful enough, and it's not a big enough project to take into C or Python. > Python isn't perfect, but it just seems like a cleaner design in a > variety of ways. Definitely true. It also reads like pseudocode (I learned python by just looking at some) and all the methods and classes tend to be very small. I rarely see anything in the base modules or libraries that takes up more than two pages. That's pretty impressive. ===