A Plea For A Return To Sanity!!!

David Oppenheimer davidopp at megsinet.net
Thu Aug 26 10:59:22 EDT 1999


Dear Group,

How we have let the ravings of a few PERL programmers postings shift the
entire tide of this newsgroup to comparing Python & Perl and throwing various
insults I do not know....Can we stop this now and get back to discussing how
to better program in Python or am I misinterpreting the real reason for the
existence of this group?!


David O.

Alexander Staubo wrote:

> In article <37bd4876 at cs.colorado.edu>, tchrist at mox.perl.com says...
> >      [courtesy cc of this posting mailed to cited author]
> >
> > In comp.lang.python,
> >     "Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes:
> > :as an aside, it's a bit sad that Tom didn't read the book's
> > :preface, where Mark says, among other things:
> >
> > It's a shame that so many of you should be so unbelievably harsh on me
> > when *I'm* the one who with malice toward none and full of revulsion
> > at the flames causes by *YOUR* community's ignorant attacks on mine,
> > that *I* made the honest effort to learn *YOUR* language, and that I
> > furthermore for your benefit not my own then took the additonal trouble
> > to write-up my experiences and observations gleaned
>
> With all due respect -- not being an active part of this discussion, I
> have observed from afar no flames or unreasonable critique, bar an
> obviously benign "Try reading the docs". Do I sense a whiff of paranoia
> in the air?
>
> Your comments about manpages seem to imply that "man" is the defacto
> standard for documentation; it simply isn't. The quasiphilosophical idea
> that "if it's not in the manpages and not in the Lutz book, it doesn't
> exist" [my phrasing] sounds a bit like the tantrums of a person too
> comfortable in his own land to accept the value of others; "If it
> doesn't have McDonald's, it's not real country."
>
> Your tool isn't everybody else's tool. Personally I don't even know what
> "apropos" is. Even if I made an effort at using it, it doubt it would
> make _my_ workday any easier; I have my own tools, and if I had to use
> man (which isn't part of my toolset), I would nonetheless submit to its
> archaic interface and use it, just as you ought to submit to the
> inflexibilities of the HTML documentation. No need to invoke a fatwah on
> anybody; we live to learn about and deal with our differences.
>
> >while five hundred
> > miles away from the nearest tree or internet link.
>
> Python -- or the binary distribution at any rate -- comes with adequate
> HTML documentation in the box, no tree or Internet link required.
>
> [one pompous declamation of self-importance, two generalizations, three
> incriminations against the community, one incident of improper language,
> and three cynicisms generously deleted]
>
> >
> > --tom
> >
>
> --
> Alexander Staubo             http://www.mop.no/~alex/
> "QED?" said Russell.
> "It's Latin," said Morgan. "It means, 'So there you bastard'."
> --Robert Rankin, _Nostramadus Ate My Hamster_





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