On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 05:19:09PM +0100, Nelson, David J wrote:
> Do we want a UNIX standard? A linux standard? A Gentoo standard? A lowest
> common denominator standard? A "what most people prefer" standard?
I am not talking about which colors to use, which is a personal
preference and can have no standard. I am talking about the most
basic principles, that all programs behave the same and can be enabled
or disabled in the same way. When gentoo unilaterally decides to do
the opposite, it sticks out like a sore thumb. The proper way to add
color to emerge and its affiliates would have been with an alias, as
it does with ls, not by adding hard coded escape chars to messages,
nor by defaulting to color enabled and adding untested non-functional
control features to disable it.
There are programming standards too. They include, at the most basic
level, testing new features to make sure they actually work and not
using hard coded magic numbers when existing libraries handle the
feature and are known to work. Even you, as a non-programmer, can see
how those standards are good ones to follow.
> > Several other now-forgotten similar breakages which rendered my system
> > unbootable. Gentoo is the absolute first Unix system I have used in
> > 25 years which I have been leery of rebooting for wondering if I will
> > have to break out the rescue disk yet again.
When there's an upgrade to the basic commands, like /bin/ls, it is
only reasonable to assume it is a useful upgrade. My system is not
mission critical for a company, only for me, but I do not relish
spending hours trying to figure out what some amateur has done to
screw up an upgrade. I shouldn't even have to worry about such basic
common sense as these failures.
> Insults rarely get you anywhere. Constructive feedback and discussion are
> generally better options FYI.
Like I said. My experience has been that people who don't follow even
the most rudimentary principles, like testing features, following
standards, and reusing existing code rather than hard coding magic
numbers, simply do not listen to old farts who file bug reports. This
has been from years of experience with coworkers and with mailing
lists.
My rant here has been to let off steam. I am not going to waste time
filing a bug report about magic numbers, standards, and testing new
features, when those are the things that should be taught in the first
weeks of any programming course and explained in the first chapters of
any programming book. I might as well explain 2+2=4 to someone
screwing up his calculus homework.
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