[Python-Dev] extended print statement, uPre-PEP
Skip Montanaro
skip@mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Sun, 23 Jul 2000 23:34:53 -0500 (CDT)
Paul> Common Lisp and Linux are victims of feature creep. Perl and
Paul> Sendmail just suck.
Whoa there! Not to get into an off-topic shouting match of tit-for-tat, but
Sendmail's syntax dates from a time when things were a lot less uniform than
they are today. Machines were a helluva lot slower, had lots less memory
and faced a decidedly less uniform email environment than later tools did.
I don't believe early versions of Sendmail had "frozen" config files either,
so parsing fast (probably with a very crude, ad hoc parser) was important.
The universe of email possibilities -- both in addressing and connectivity
-- was much broader than it is today. You had !-paths, Bitnet, SMTP, CSNet,
direct connections, store-and-forward and fewer standards (like RFC-822 and
its descendants). Unlike more recent tools, Sendmail did it all.
That very few people ever have to stare at a raw sendmail.cf file anymore is
a big credit to the Sendmail gang in my opinion...
Skip