Re: who needs es..?

[Steven M Rezsutek <S.Rezsutek@baloo.gsfc.nasa.gov>]

> If es has had any significant effect on my everyday usage, it's probably been
> in making me appreciate the need for simplicity in shells. I've gone back to
> rc for every environment (sun3, sparc and rs6000) that I use regularly, but I
> do have some hairier scripts written in es now, particularly ones that I'd 
> formerly have used Perl for.


For me the process was a little different. 

I used rc for quite some time, and the ``minimalist purification''
was a truly refreshing thing.  I was able to rid myself of all 
the krufty habits that I learned using less elegant shells, and
came to appreciate how much one can do with a small but well made
tool.  But. like all altered states of reality, the high started
fading, and I began wanting something "more"...

Then, es came along with the same cleanliness, but with that "certain
je ne c'est qouis" [pardon my French], call it `extensibility.'  Hey,
this felt like a *programming language* as much as a shell, but it
could do shell stuff too...  I can't say that any of the scripts
I've written require all that es offers, but they were a little
easier to write and, IMHO, look a lot "cleaner" too.

I'm not much of a speed freak, so I don't worry about that aspect,
and I do like to feel "all that power" under my finger tips.  Maybe
that has something to do with the fact that I like Genera?  (My 3640's
no speed demon, but it sure feels nice...) One small step closer
to that "integrated environment feeling", I guess.

So, to answer the question ``Who *needs* es?'', well, who needs computers 
to begin with? ;-)  Now, if we ask ``Who, *wants* es?'',  I Do!! I Do!!  

Just my US$0.019999...  worth,

Steve

P.S.

Thanks, Paul && Byron (and everyone else who helped make es what it is).