Re: You said the J word

[byron@netapp.com (Byron Rakitzis)]

cks says:

> A pragmatic comment: there exist a noticable, perhaps significant body
>of people who refuse to try rc because it doesn't do job control.

> Whether or not you want to attract such people as users is up to you.
>(you == a generic, no one specific)

Indeed. And that's one reason why more people use software written by
people like Larry Wall and Richard Stallman than by people like Rob
Pike.

When I wrote rc, I did it for Paul Haahr and myself. That other people
have found it useful is quite gratifying, but was not my primary
purpose---it was a side-effect of sorts.

And for that matter I don't think Stallman adds features with reckless
abandon because his ego depends on it---he has motives of his own.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, in order to make software popular you
have to resort to the emacs/ksh/bash/zsh/perl approach, and this
conflicts directly with my "religious views" on programming. So I don't
worry too much about it. If there's another way to harmonize the two
approaches, someone let me know, I'm not above seeking net.stardom if
it's easy enough. :-)