On Fri, 2007-10-19 at 20:28 -0700, Xah Lee wrote: > When i first heard about distributed revision control system about 2 > years ago, i heard of Darcs, which is written in Haskell. I was hugely > excited, thinking about the functional programing i love, and the no- > side effect pure system i idolize, and the technology of human animal > i rapture in daily. > > I have no serious actual need to use a revision system (RVS) in recent > years, so i never really tried Darcs (nor using any RVS). I just > thought the new-fangled distributed tech in combination of Haskell was > great. > > About few months ago, i was updating a 6-year old page i wrote on unix > tools: ( http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/usoft.html ) and i was > trying to update myself on the current state of art of revision > systems. I read Wikipedia this passage: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darcs > > « Darcs currently has a number of significant bugs (see e.g. [1]). The > most severe of them is "the Conflict bug" - an exponential blowup in > time needed to perform conflict resolution during merges, reaching > into the hours and days for "large" repositories. A redesign of the > repository format and wide-ranging changes in the codebase are planned > in order to fix this bug, and work on this is planned to start in > Spring 2007 [2]. » > > This somewhat bursted my bubble, as there always was some doubt in the > back of my mind about just how Darcs is not just a fantasy-ware > trumpeted by a bunch of functional tech geekers. (i heard of Darcs in > irc emacs and haskell channels, who are often student and hobbiests > programers) > > Also, in my light research, it was to my surprise, that Darcs is not > the only distributed systems, and perhaps not the first one neither, > contrary to my impressions. In fact, today there are quite a LOT > distributed revision systems, actually as a norm. When one looks into > these, such as Git ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(software) ) one > finds that some of them are already in practical industrial use for > large projects, as opposed to Darcs's academic/hobbist kind of > community. > > In addition to these findings, one additional that greatly pissed me > off entirely about Darcs, is the intro of the author (David Roundy)'s > essay about his (questionable-sounding) “theory of patches” used in > Darcs. ( http://darcs.net/manual/node8.html#Patch ) > > Here's the 2 passages: > > «I think a little background on the author is in order. I am a > physicist, and think like a physicist. The proofs and theorems given > here are what I would call ``physicist'' proofs and theorems, which is > to say that while the proofs may not be rigorous, they are practical, > and the theorems are intended to give physical insight. It would be > great to have a mathematician work on this, but I am not a > mathematician, and don't care for math.» > > «From the beginning of this theory, which originated as the result of > a series of email discussions with Tom Lord, I have looked at patches > as being analogous to the operators of quantum mechanics. I include in > this appendix footnotes explaining the theory of patches in terms of > the theory of quantum mechanics. I know that for most people this > won't help at all, but many of my friends (and as I write this all > three of darcs' users) are physicists, and this will be helpful to > them. To non-physicists, perhaps it will provide some insight into how > at least this physicist thinks.» > > I love math. I respect Math. I'm nothing but a menial servant to > Mathematics. Who the fuck is this David guy, who proclaims that he's > no mathematician, then proceed to tell us he dosen't fucking care > about math? Then, he went on about HIS personal fucking zeal for > physics, in particular injecting the highly quacky “quantum mechanics” > with impunity.
I'm gonna like your writings with all respect. Actually your writings has the quiet force. See you often ;; -- Byung-Hee HWANG <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * আমি তোমাকে ভালোবাসি InZealBomb, Kyungpook National University, KOREA "OK. Then I have to kill him." -- Michael Corleone, "Chapter 11", page 146 -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list