From: Steve Davis <strat@ksu.ksu.edu>

Subject: ABOI: Re: To be or not to be?

Date: 18 Oct 1994 13:58:05 -0500

Here's one of the best flames I've seen in recent history.  Good job Tom!

tchrist@mox.perl.com (Tom Christiansen) writes:
> In comp.lang.perl, drussell@gisws6.rtpnc.epa.gov (DFRussell) writes
> the following (considering his address, you Americans out there might 
> as well just consider it your tax dollars at work -- or perhaps waste):
> 
> :until perl is shipped as a standard part of unix, it's use will
> :remain a religious issue.
> 
> Your insights into certain matters are lamentably lacking.  I entreat you
> to grant me but a few bytes of your disk and a few moments of your life to
> apprise you of some of these notable myopias from which you appear to
> suffer.
> 
> Unix:	    Unix is a massive conglomeration of subtly incompatible yet
> 	    deceptively similar operating systems.  You cannot merely
> 	    choose a system, point to it, and pronounce "This is Unix!"
> 	    There is no officially blessed prototype from which all others
> 	    derive.  It used to be the case, at least colloquially, that
> 	    Unix was defined to be whatever happened to be running on
> 	    Dennis Ritchie's desk.  Well, since Dennis now runs Plan 9 on
> 	    his deck, this means we're probably nearly *ALL* out of luck.
> 	    There are still systems out that don't support cut or paste;
> 	    by the time they do, we'll all be using something else.
> 
> SysAdmins:  A Unix systems administrator can seldom afford to run on any 
> 	    given system precisely what its vendor has shipped and not a
> 	    whit more.  If they did, their customers (read: users) would
> 	    in many cases stage a small rebel.  While some enlightened
> 	    vendors actually do ship tcsh, nvi, sendmail 8, and perl, the
> 	    vast but diminishing majority are still caught up in proving
> 	    that old customer support adage:
> 	   
> 	       It is easier to drive a camel through the eye of a needle
> 	       than it is to get useful software into the hands of the
> 	       customer.
> 
> 	    Consequently, Unix sysadmins (our Cybernetic Crisis Management
> 	    Engineers) must do all they possibly can to present a seamless
> 	    working environment for their users.  In today's world of Unix
> 	    systems administration, a reasonable working knowledge of Perl
> 	    is nothing shy of indispensable, even though all you might use
> 	    it for should to be to support the myriad useful Perl programs
> 	    already written and distributed to the farthest reaches of the 
> 	    Net.
> 
> Perl:	    Perl serves, amongst other things, to alleviate the suffering
> 	    of users and systems administrators on Unix systems through a
> 	    more expeditious, robust, predictable, portable, and uniform
> 	    tool for their work than was previously available.  To deprive
> 	    these poor trenchworkers at wit's end such simple solace
> 	    ranges between simple mean-spiritedness all the way to sadism
> 	    most depraved.  Most of us can attest through tortuous tales
> 	    that we have wasted quite enough of our lives bashing our
> 	    heads against those decrepit walls in which vendors are all
> 	    too intent to immure us.  
> 	   
> 	    Perl is a way through of this labyrinth.  If you cannot fairly
> 	    appraise its usefulness in taking arms against this outrageous
> 	    situation, then may you walk in the convoluted corefiles of a
> 	    congenitally brain-damaged /bin/sh all the days of your life.
> 
> Religion:   Religious issues are those which have no applicable 
> 	    objective criteria.  It's not clear to what particular notion
> 	    you're referring, but the viability and utility of a
> 	    programming paradigm clearly lends itself to objective
> 	    analysis more readily than it does to a leap of faith.
> 
> Logic: 	    Proof by assertion will not work.  You may continue to 
> 	    repeat yourself ad infinitum, but until you construct reasoned
> 	    arguments to defend your vacuous assertions, you're just
> 	    making so much wind.
> 
> Grammar:    You write "it's use" above.  While I can certainly condone the
> 	    occasionally useful departure from the more accepted
> 	    orthographic conventions, when this impedes legibility, it's
> 	    really much easier on your reader if you'd just stick to its
> 	    more common representation.
> 
> USENET:	    One simply does not come to a newsgroup dedicated to subject
> 	    foo and proceed to tell everyone there they're wasting their 
> 	    time with foo and if they think otherwise, they're religious 
> 	    bigots.  This is generally referred to as bad netiquette, which 
> 	    is appears to be something for which you hold scant regard.
> 
> Courtesy:   "Yoh Perl bigot" isn't considered even vaguely polite, and you
> 	    don't need a personal missive from Miss Manners to divine this.
> 
> You do not appear to possess any deep understanding of Unix, systems
> administration, Perl, religion, logic, grammar, USENET, or even common
> courtesy, that hallmark of human decency.  Could it then in fact be that
> you are merely Rush Limbaugh in cyberguise?
> 
> --tom
> -- 
>     "We all agree on the necessity of compromise.  We just can't agree on
>      when it's necessary to compromise."
>                 --Larry Wall in  <1991Nov13.194420.28091@netlabs.com>


-- 
                                             Steve Davis <strat@ksu.ksu.edu>
                                                     Kansas State University



Jesper Nilsson // dat92jni@ludat.lth.se or jesper@df.lth.se