[geeks] Software Bloat

[David Cantrell]

On Mon, Dec 17, 2001 at 03:57:27PM -0500, Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> Also, BTW, why don't you like python?  Is it the whitespace thing?  I must 
> admit, I'm not super crazy about perl.  It is fine for somethings, but it gets
> ugly fast.  I'm significantly a bigger fan of Python, although I use it only 
> slightly more than perl.

Yeah, mainly the whitespace.  But also because I'm used to perl.

Perl is indeed fine for some things and lousy for others, that applies to
any language.  It's certainly easy to write ugly perl, but it's pretty easy
to keep it readable if you're careful, and IME, that is true of any
language.  Also, ugliness and incomprehensibility has a lot to do with
context.

Many people think that perl is only suitable for use as a scripting
language.  I say rubbish.  I use it to write applications.  Big applications,
worth many millions of pounds.  I'm also aware of similarly sized apps
written in python, so python is just as capable.  It just doesn't taste
right for me.

> >> You're right about that first sentence, at least according to every
> >> Emacs detractor I've ever heard from!  ;-)
> > I'm an emacs detractor, and I don't think it's overly bloated for what it
> > does.  The 20Mb that it takes on my box is 20Mb crammed with features.
> So, err, what don't you like about emacs?  Are you a vi person, or some else
> altogether.  I think I understand the mindset that prefers vi.  That just isn't
> really me.

I'm not really sure.  I think that it's over-complex for the job I want of
it.  I already have other applications which I am happy with, so I don't
need all the baggage^Wextras it comes with.  I have perfectly adequate mail
and news programs, I am sufficiently familiar with cvs to be able to drive
it from the command line, and so on.  I admit that some emacs modes contain
features which would be beneficial for me, but for the most part, I get by
perfectly well without them.  So, I suppose I don't use emacs because the
benefits I see in it are not sufficient to make it worthwhile learning its
interface.  There's also the issue that I'm far too much of a tinkerer, and
if I start using emacs regularly, I just *know* I'll spend more time
customising it than getting any work done :-)

I think that I'm about to be tipped over the edge though.  One of my
co-conspirators in the London Perl Mongers has got the bare bones of a
perl refactoring browser working in emacs.  I want!

> I probably shouldn't have asked that, it might incite violence.

ObThwack

-- 
David Cantrell | david at cantrell.org.uk | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

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