> -----Original Message----- > From: Peter Donald [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2000 1:25 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: Did somebody say Shut up and Write? :) > > > At 12:30 20/12/00 -0500, Joshua Davis wrote: > >> As interesting as it is to view the world as a tree of single > type nodes, > >> when you get into using things for long its inevitable that > some sort of > >> specialization creeps in somewhere. And its actually quite useful > >> at times.
In this case, the target and task concepts are borrowed from 'make'. The work of figuring out whether these concepts are usefull has already been done, and the design of the current ANT (wisely) takes advantage of this. > >> Genericity is not necessarily your friend. Yes, this is a biased > >> opinion -- > >> it's based on 3 1/2 years of coding Java at JavaSoft though if > that means > >> anything. > >> > > > >Genericity leads to the "trying to boil the ocean" problem. ANT is very > >vulnerable to this. I would hate to see it devolve into some > sort of wierdo > >XML scripting language. > > Don't be ludicrous. Just trying to contribute. ANT does come close to being a cross-platform 'shell' language, IMHO. > Genericity does not neccesarily lead to flexability > syndrome (your "trying to boil the ocean"). Just like specificity does not > lead to a rigid jail. Done well genericity works, done poorly it doesn't. True, genericity can be a *very* good thing. In this case, James was suggesting the different node types in the tree (workspace, target, task, etc.) provide a degree of specificity that is appropriate, IMO. > Specificty is easier to do I don't know if specificity is *always* easier, but you're right... genericity is never easy! :) > but it's not like we lack brain power > on ant-dev > so ... No argument here, there's an abundance of smart people on this list.
