a little bit of controversy amongst some faculty members
Wel-l-l-l... Lor' love a... duck, I guess!
...I can just imagine the furrowed brows, the intense whispered conversations, the handkerchiefs ripped in half, the can-you-squeeze-me-in-for-an-extra-session calls to therapists...
There are a lot of the humor-challenged (in this case, I should say whimsy-challenged, I guess) in the academy, eh?[1]
Witness "P.C."
(There. You shoulda said, One time I threw a stone at a white male. That woulda been OK!
1. Especially when they're dolphin-hugging Mac users!;-)
Steve Jobs pronounces it "ten", and that's supposed to be the "right" way of pronouncing it. But myself, and everyone I know uses the "X" pronunciation.
I had thought -- when I started seeing "OS X 10.2", etc. -- that they had "surrendered" to the "Oh Ess Ecks" pronunciation...
I thought I could see why, too: as you say, "everyone says it that way"; then too, "it ends in 'X'", and that's kinda cool -- just on general principle, and on all-those-*n*x's-that-end-with-"X" grounds.[1]
Was I wrong?
Or, to put it another way, will there be a "Mac OS XI"? I really did think they'd concluded that they'd serendipitously hit on a neat name, and would stick with it...
If Ecks-not-Ten is not "sanctioned", what is the point of "OS X 10.4"? How am I supposed to say that? Does Jobs actually say, Oh Ess Ten Ten Point Four"??
1. Except for the *BSD's, which, I believe, end with "D".;-)
Well, anything could be a hoax, but I find this eminently believable. I heard somewhere (maybe even here;-)about a fellow who got in trouble for using the 'find' command...
...You know all those 'permission denied' messages you see for all the directories you don't have permissions for? (Or rather, that you would see if you didn't redirect stderr...)
Well, don't you see, that's trying to break into those directories, isn't it?
Right?
Anyway, that's the view that was taken by the 'sysadmins' at whatever institution this was...
Then there are the librarians who believe that they've been 'hacked' when some student changes the wallpaper on one of the machines...
On the Windows machine I use at work, I've got a copy of my text editor. This... how to put it?..._freaks_ my boss out. He hasn't told me to delete it, (some bosses would, though!) but it _disturbs_ him... Software he's never heard of on the machine! What if it does something weird in the middle of the night?
A lot of people have deeply irrational attitudes towards any aspect of computing beyond their knowledge -- there's something almost occult about knowing how to change wallpaper; using lynx, not using Notepad[1], y'know?
Heck, come to think of it, I've got a copy of lynx itself on the work machine, too. (Hope the boss doesn't find out!;-) I was doing a little browsing during a break using lynx... A co-worker says, "what are you doing?"... "Looking at [whatever site]", I reply.
"So," she says very slowly, "you're... reading a story... OK..."
I tried to explain the concept of a non-graphical browser... Even showed her the same page in IE... I still don't think she grasped that I wasn't engaged in some fundamentally different -- and weird -- activity.
So, hell yeah, I believe someone sicced the cops on that guy!
1. Or, FTM, using a text editor at all. A lot of folks have no idea what a text editor is...
Heh. My aplogies. I was a little hard on the language, due perhaps to the fact that my strongest memories of it are about how much cooler I found Perl to be.
I kinda thought you didn't really mean that...;-)
kept closed for so, so long
I basically agree. There's always been Regina, but I've tended to think that a lot of folks have wanted OO-ness...
There's a _bit_ of kludginess/jump-through-hoopiness for someone who wants to script on a 'nix machine using Rexx -- not at all the case with Perl which is very well integrated. It's a chicken-and-egg problem: if there had been a good open implementation way back when all those itty issues would've been solved, but there wasn't so...
(Some Rexx folks like to speculate that there wouldn't have been a Perl, etc. etc....;-)
Personally, I'd like to try Perl, if only to get away from bash, which drives me a little crazy sometimes...
Two more points -- WRT text-processing, regular expressions, great as they are, are not always the optimal solution. Sometimes Rexx's PARSE makes a heck of a lot more sense.
Lastly, I think Rexx makes a great first language.
Anyway, great development. We'll see what happens.
> Using Rexx in conjunction with Bash scripting I can accomplish most of the everyday tasks I face as a sysadmin.
Hey, I thought I was the only one who used primarily Rexx and bash!;-)
I'd actually _like_ to learn Perl, but I've yet to run across a text-processing task I couldn't get done in Rexx.
I'll often load a file into the (GPL'd) Hessling Editor ("THE"), which uses Rexx an an extension language. What the editor's native commands (quite powerful in their own right) won't do on their own, a Rexx macro will.
Common scenario: I'll have a group of text files all of the same sort that need some complex editing. I'll load _one_ of the files into THE, and begin using native commands and Rexx to do what needs to be done. Meanwhile, I'm keeping track of what I'm doing in another buffer: i.e. I'm assembling a macro that will do just what needs to be done to all the other files in the group, and will do it in a flash...
Rexx _does_ have a niche, and (so I've thought for a long time) _could_ find a place in the hearts of many *nix users.
More precisely, what I've thought is that if there were an open-source *OO* Rexx (Regina, nice as it is, is not ObjectRexx) Rexx might have a chance.
I wonder if it isn't too late though... Perl/Python/Ruby etc. are pretty entrenched (and well they should be -- I _still_ maintain Rexx could have a place in the ecology, however).
This is an interesting development, to be sure. Maybe it's _not_ too late! At any rate, if you won't give Rexx a try, do me a favor and disbelieve the poster who says QBasic is better.;-)
When I see these pans of the Baroque Cycle, I find myself dividing them into two categories: 1) The poster doesn't like the books because they're simply, genuinely not to his/her taste. 2) The poster doesn't like the books 'cause he/she Just Isn't Smart Enough.
I know 2) sounds awful, but am I the only one who's had that awful thought?
Slashdot Mirror
(Stop Me Before I Reply Again. ;-)
Well, that might remind people of Richie Havens at Woodstock...
I'd suggest "Weakest-to-the-Wall Linux", or "John Galt Linux".
Awww, they wouldn't have done that if they'd really "found the meaning of ubuntu"...
(Did you give them a hug?)
But, all kidding aside, would you say that my new distribution, Woo-woo Linux, might be facing some problems?
a little bit of controversy amongst some faculty members
Wel-l-l-l... Lor' love a... duck, I guess!
...I can just imagine the furrowed brows, the intense whispered conversations, the handkerchiefs ripped in half, the can-you-squeeze-me-in-for-an-extra-session calls to therapists...
There are a lot of the humor-challenged (in this case, I should say whimsy-challenged, I guess) in the academy, eh?[1]
Witness "P.C."
(There. You shoulda said, One time I threw a stone at a white male. That woulda been OK!
1. Especially when they're dolphin-hugging Mac users! ;-)
Steve Jobs pronounces it "ten", and that's supposed to be the "right" way of pronouncing it. But myself, and everyone I know uses the "X" pronunciation.
I had thought -- when I started seeing "OS X 10.2", etc. -- that they had "surrendered" to the "Oh Ess Ecks" pronunciation...
I thought I could see why, too: as you say, "everyone says it that way"; then too, "it ends in 'X'", and that's kinda cool -- just on general principle, and on all-those-*n*x's-that-end-with-"X" grounds.[1]
Was I wrong?
Or, to put it another way, will there be a "Mac OS XI"? I really did think they'd concluded that they'd serendipitously hit on a neat name, and would stick with it...
If Ecks-not-Ten is not "sanctioned", what is the point of "OS X 10.4"? How am I supposed to say that? Does Jobs actually say, Oh Ess Ten Ten Point Four"??
1. Except for the *BSD's, which, I believe, end with "D". ;-)
What The Transcript Says:
What He Probably Really Said:
WTTS:
WHPRS:
Well, anything could be a hoax, but I find this eminently believable. I heard somewhere (maybe even here ;-)about a fellow who got in trouble for using the 'find' command...
Well, don't you see, that's trying to break into those directories, isn't it?
Right?
Anyway, that's the view that was taken by the 'sysadmins' at whatever institution this was...
Then there are the librarians who believe that they've been 'hacked' when some student changes the wallpaper on one of the machines...
On the Windows machine I use at work, I've got a copy of my text editor. This... how to put it? ..._freaks_ my boss out. He hasn't told me to delete it, (some bosses would, though!) but it _disturbs_ him... Software he's never heard of on the machine! What if it does something weird in the middle of the night?
A lot of people have deeply irrational attitudes towards any aspect of computing beyond their knowledge -- there's something almost occult about knowing how to change wallpaper; using lynx, not using Notepad[1], y'know?
Heck, come to think of it, I've got a copy of lynx itself on the work machine, too. (Hope the boss doesn't find out! ;-) I was doing a little browsing during a break using lynx... A co-worker says, "what are you doing?"... "Looking at [whatever site]", I reply.
"So," she says very slowly, "you're... reading a story... OK..."
I tried to explain the concept of a non-graphical browser... Even showed her the same page in IE... I still don't think she grasped that I wasn't engaged in some fundamentally different -- and weird -- activity.
So, hell yeah, I believe someone sicced the cops on that guy!
1. Or, FTM, using a text editor at all. A lot of folks have no idea what a text editor is...
I basically agree. There's always been Regina, but I've tended to think that a lot of folks have wanted OO-ness...
There's a _bit_ of kludginess/jump-through-hoopiness for someone who wants to script on a 'nix machine using Rexx -- not at all the case with Perl which is very well integrated. It's a chicken-and-egg problem: if there had been a good open implementation way back when all those itty issues would've been solved, but there wasn't so...
(Some Rexx folks like to speculate that there wouldn't have been a Perl, etc. etc.... ;-)
Personally, I'd like to try Perl, if only to get away from bash, which drives me a little crazy sometimes...
Two more points -- WRT text-processing, regular expressions, great as they are, are not always the optimal solution. Sometimes Rexx's PARSE makes a heck of a lot more sense.
Lastly, I think Rexx makes a great first language.
Anyway, great development. We'll see what happens.
> Using Rexx in conjunction with Bash scripting I can accomplish most of the everyday tasks I face as a sysadmin.
;-)
;-)
Hey, I thought I was the only one who used primarily Rexx and bash!
I'd actually _like_ to learn Perl, but I've yet to run across a text-processing task I couldn't get done in Rexx.
I'll often load a file into the (GPL'd) Hessling Editor ("THE"), which uses Rexx an an extension language. What the editor's native commands (quite powerful in their own right) won't do on their own, a Rexx macro will.
Common scenario: I'll have a group of text files all of the same sort that need some complex editing. I'll load _one_ of the files into THE, and begin using native commands and Rexx to do what needs to be done. Meanwhile, I'm keeping track of what I'm doing in another buffer: i.e. I'm assembling a macro that will do just what needs to be done to all the other files in the group, and will do it in a flash...
Rexx _does_ have a niche, and (so I've thought for a long time) _could_ find a place in the hearts of many *nix users.
More precisely, what I've thought is that if there were an open-source *OO* Rexx (Regina, nice as it is, is not ObjectRexx) Rexx might have a chance.
I wonder if it isn't too late though... Perl/Python/Ruby etc. are pretty entrenched (and well they should be -- I _still_ maintain Rexx could have a place in the ecology, however).
This is an interesting development, to be sure. Maybe it's _not_ too late! At any rate, if you won't give Rexx a try, do me a favor and disbelieve the poster who says QBasic is better.
When I see these pans of the Baroque Cycle, I find myself dividing them into two categories: 1) The poster doesn't like the books because they're simply, genuinely not to his/her taste. 2) The poster doesn't like the books 'cause he/she Just Isn't Smart Enough.
I know 2) sounds awful, but am I the only one who's had that awful thought?