85% languages (was Re:Linux fat/bloated)

[Paul Nash]

>Ruby is a lot older than you realise.  =)

You're right, it is.  Ruby dates back to Feb 24, 1993.  I thought that it
was a child of the late '90's.

However, AWK was written in 1977, and Perl 1 was foisted on an unsuspecting
world in 1987.

They all have different uses.  Perl has evolved over time, but was and
still is primarily a system administration tool.  It is spectacularly good
at that.

>This isn't a strong argument, since there is good documentation out
>there.  Well, sortof good documentation.  Well.. lots of mediocre
>HOWTOs.  The answers are there and I found them easily enough.  Still,
>this isn't always the case.

In most cases, the documentation stinks.  That's why you should RTFS :-).
We don't call it "open source" for nothing, you know ...

>As a user, I think that I would end up learning the tool and bending
>it to my uses instead of working on the remaining 15.

Can you say "Microsoft"?  There, it's not that hard.  Try again a few
times, and when you can do it without barfing, pop into Best Buy and get an
application that you can just "learn and use".

>I also think it's morbidly funny when spectacularly cool applications
>sit around at the "almost usable" stage and never make their way to
>completion.  Somehow, the logic that another interested developer will
>swoop in and take over just doesn't happen in the real world.

It depends on the developer and/or development team.  *YOU* think that they
are driven to develop a spectacular product that will install easily, work
right out the box, and do everything that you want.  Oh, and have decent
documentation as well.

I have been writing software for over 20 years.  When people pay me money,
I write software that meets all their specs, installs effortlessly (well,
embedded stuff takes some effort, so this is relative), is well documented,
and so on.

Folk who write software for re-sale do this too.  Well, in theory, anyway
(cf. Microsoft and many others).

When I write software for my own use, I put in enough features to satisfy
my needs (or the most critical ones), I hack up a user interface that works
well enough for me, and I document that stuff that isn't totally obvious to
me or that I think that I'll forget.  I generally keep such software to
myself, by some end up in wider circulation.  In these cases, I don't care
whether anyone else wants something done better -- if they do, they are at
liberty to do it.  If they give me money, I'll do it.  If they complain to
me, I put them in my kill-file and never hear from them again.

This sort of software isn't pretty, because it answers a need that *I*
have.  However, other people have often found it useful, and in some cases
have built on my basic work to produce some quite full-featured products.
Bully for them!  In one or two cases, I have even used their versions
rather than my own, although I usually use my own.

When I find someone else's software that does most of what I want, I may
ask them for some advice, or for explanations about why they did things in
some specific ways, but if I want it to work differently, the onus is on
*ME* to change it, not them.  Sometimes I pick up the remnants of dead
projects and resurrect them enough to fit my needs.

You gets what you pays for.

	paul


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