'for every' and 'for any'

[Oren Tirosh]

On Wed, May 29, 2002 at 08:48:33PM +0000, Quinn Dunkan wrote:
> >I don't have a personal utility library. It's on purpose. I don't have
> >personalized key bindings. I try to avoid customization.  Customization is
> >a big part of what makes one programmer's code difficult to maintain by
> >another programmer, what makes on programmers's workstation unusable by 
> >another and makes combining code from several sources difficult.
> 
> Um, customizing your workstation is only going to cause problems for other
> people if they use your account.  I'm hoping they don't do that?  No one can
> use my wacky setup but they don't need to because I log out when I'm done.

Nobody else ever uses my workstation but if I customize it too much I will
feel crippled whenever I ssh or install a new machine somewhere.  So I ask
myself whether I really need it.

> All of the good programmers I've seen working have idiosyncratic setups. 

And they spend ridiculous amounts of time fine-tuning their setup that could 
not possibly be justified by the alleged efficiency gained.  I used to do 
that too.  It's fun, but it is not rational activity.  Python is one of the 
things that helped me stop it.  It's just good enough as it is.  I only need 
a nice editor (vi will do if I'm on an alien machine) and Python which comes 
installed by default more and more often.

> Of the hard-to-maintain code I've looked at, it's always been not enough
> abstraction, rather than too much.  People who are used to C and Pascal 

It has nothing to do with abstraction.  I'm talking about the part of the
learning curve called "making youself feel at home".  If the environment is
not powerful enough and makes you jump through hoops for common tasks 
it encourages gratuitous customization until you feel comfortable.

> library, but using one vs. not using one.  There seems to be some kind of
> cultural thing where C programmers like to reinvent stuff.  Or something.

I think they hate reinventing stuff, but C is just not powerful enough as 
it is when you finish the installation.  I am not talking about theoretical 
Turing-equivalence, I'm talking about the power of sitting down and just 
writing what you want without too much fuss.  So they customize and search
for the right generic utility library or write their own.  And it's never 
the *same* utility library, of course.

> stacked up later.  No language can come with everything in the box, and an
> attempt to make it so is trouble because everyone's needs are different.

Python comes close. It answers more people's needs with less things to learn 
and keep in your mind. Languages are not all born equal.  Some of them have 
Dutch ancestry :-)

	Oren