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From: lerner@ISI-VAXA.ARPA (Mitchell Lerner)
Newsgroups: fa.info-vax
Subject: Re: Teco
Message-ID: <8509102254.AA05835@isi-vaxa.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 10-Sep-85 18:54:00 EDT
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Posted: Tue Sep 10 18:54:00 1985
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Dear Jeff:

The question was:

"If you have a hairy text manipulation task and you hate to type and
you hate "lisp-oriented" languages then what do you use?"



Gee Jeff... 

As stated, I guess that is a job for TECO or some "lisp-oriented" language.
What else would you use if you hate to type and hates lisp?  

Why does one need to hate to type?  Most English word are longer than 
two characters.  If you hate to type discriptive words then I guess
the language of choice is one that doesnt have and words in it.  And
the result wont be discriptive.

I dont hate lisp, It has its uses (albet few functional ones). 
However it is not very portable or
structured (i.e. maintainable). And if written like most whiz-bang,
string processing programs the lisp program will be filed under G
as soon as the author leaves the company and someone has to modify it
(it will be rewritten).

Also, how does one debug a TECO program???  With much effort no doubt.

Now if the guy wanted to write a maintainable, scrutable utility then
he would use a language that supports the development of such a utility:
Bliss or C, perhapse certain Pascals (no, no Pascal!).  I am not saying
that cryptic code cannot be written in C (just look at Berkley Unix source)
but languages of that ilk can do the jobs and are less painfull to 
debug and maintain.

Good programs take time and effort.  Time should be spent finding the
most clear, simple soultion, and not the most cute, conveluded one.



P.S.

Jeff:
	If one wanted to cross an ocean, and he hates to swim and he
hates to fly then what would he use other that a boat?