Re: new sysinstall

[Richard Coleman <richardcoleman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chris Pressey wrote:

> Or maybe someone could just start me off with why sh + C isn't good
> enough.  Sure, maintainability is an admirable goal, but in my
> experience, there's no language that automatically grants you that.  I'd
> much rather work on someone else's well-thought-out, well-commented,
> well-written sh script, than their poorly-thought-out, poorly-commented,
> poorly-written Perl/Python/Ruby/Tcl/PHP program.  *Especially* if it's
> not "really" Perl/Python/etc, but a crippled fork with its own quirks.

I can't give you a technical justification.  But I have found it very 
common for large shell scripts to degenerate into an unreadable mess. 
Sure, a really good programmer can write clear, well commented code in 
any language.  And a poor programmer can write unreadable code in any 
language.  But the way I look at it, we are looking for the "sweet 
spot".  In a dynamic environment (which includes any open source OS 
project), a scripting language should result in easier to read, easier 
to maintain code, and should allow greater participation by a larger 
group of people.

But as Dennis Miller says "Don't take my word for it.  I could be wrong".

Richard Coleman
richardcoleman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx