From: utzoo!decvax!cca!Michael.Young@CMU-CS-A@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Title: Re: useful view extension
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.4364
Posted: Wed Nov 24 01:31:49 1982
Received: Thu Nov 25 12:57:37 1982

From: Michael Wayne Young <Michael.Young@CMU-CS-A>
Date: 21 November 1982 2024-EST (Sunday)
I won't argue with most of your points if you think in terms of
maintaining something at your site.  My comments were based on the
example at hand primarily (extension to vi), where I think most of
them still apply.  Only one site (that which distributes vi, of
course) has to handle maintaining it, and it's something that they're
already maintaining in one way or another anyway.  I don't think
you'd lose too much programmer time at Berkeley to get this in.
I do think it'd be a major waste for zillions of little vi-using
sites to build their own hacks to do it though.
[Not to mention, it'd be nice to have a "standard" extension,
maybe not for 'vi', but for 'ex' which might get used as a filter.]

I also agree with the premise that "programmer time is much
more important than efficiency of machine time", but that is all too
often taken to extremes.  No sense hitting a fly with a sledge
hammer [as I claim shell scripts often do -- that was the main
point of my argument].  Shell programmers often find the most
obscure and wasteful ways to do things; how often do you see a
well-though-out algorithm written as a shell script

I will, however, grant that for once-only (and I include those
once-a-month things as "once-only" as a practical matter) messes
I often use shell scripts.  [I love "foreach" loops, for example.]
But if I'm gonna use it again and again, for my own purposes, I'll
write a program.  [It's not all that hard.]

I somehow feel I'm in the minority on this though, so I'll try
to shut up.

			Michael