Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Salvador Mirzo Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: fdm, paredit and systemd Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2025 21:10:49 -0300 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 96 Message-ID: <87h644gz5i.fsf@example.com> References: <67b21894$14$17$882e4bbb@reader.netnews.com> <67b4fc88@news.ausics.net> <67b659f8@news.ausics.net> <87mseggwo1.fsf@example.com> <87frk8drdb.fsf@example.com> <2d9b3f1c-c742-e47f-84cf-599e01f9a044@example.net> <87ikp02i0x.fsf@example.com> <87msebw9sa.fsf@example.com> <87a5aau8bz.fsf@example.com> <8a7e56c9-779d-2250-2e9c-6dd67af88570@example.net> <87r03mq9po.fsf_-_@example.com> <2f52e086-7adf-663a-2bd7-0e328bdba87c@example.net> <87a5a7hhbd.fsf@example.com> <1e0008ef-b322-6a14-5842-d1f10eac4b58@example.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2025 01:10:50 +0100 (CET) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="25508ec625a4e8d02a778a073462a267"; logging-data="3981195"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19ADZBu5pAPoXYMyGK7P2ygJloLc3y9/98=" Cancel-Lock: sha1:EnXYNK6/vkW40Pf1XYiyT5Xxr4M= sha1:6YO54VnxHj0tjJMuGnJh5UuOEak= Xref: csiph.com comp.misc:26829 D writes: > On Thu, 27 Feb 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote: > >>> Excellent! I wonder if it can replace mbsync nicely as well? Would be nice to >>> have fdm handle both my mbsync (so sync imap folders to local >>> laptop) _and_ to >>> take care of news posts! I can easily see how the filters would take care of >>> sorting the posts from various newsgroups into their respective folders in my >>> mail client. >> >> I'm not a user of mbsync, but if you use mbsync just to download mail >> from an IMAP server, then certainly fdm can replace it. > > Excellent! As an added bonus, I would then get off mbsync. I think the creator > of mbsync was woke, and changed master/slave to something I no longer remember > in the code, in order not to offend people. Complete nonsense! Lol. >>>> daemons. But it turns out that's the only thing about systemd that I >>>> ever liked. And even then I changed my opinion. Daemons are not really >>>> meant to be managed by regular users; if there's any user that should >>>> have the right to run a daemon, then they should have sysadmin powers, >>>> even if specifically just for the task at hand. Bottom line: it's a >>>> neat thing that it does, but it might not quite be a real need. >>> >>> I agree! That's the problem, it tries to be too neat, and to do too >>> much. In the >>> end you have this horrible monolithic kludge that will probably >>> crash due to its >>> complexity, and take the system with it. >>> >>> Another thing I intensely dislike with it is the long and >>> convoluted syntax of >>> the commands. I mean just look at "ls"... it's beautiful! And "l" >>> followed by an >>> "s"! =D >>> >>> Now look at this horrible mess: "systemctl list-timers" Yuck! >> >> Yeah---there's a fine line between incrementing language and sticking >> with the previous, well-established vocabulary. That's particularly >> important for hackers because they have an imense amount of vocabulary >> to manage and great fluency is essential to their day-to-day operations. > > Another example from hell for me is powershell. I've never seen such long > command! Microsoft powershell gurus must really enjoy typing! Besides, it's yet another shell. Even if it were really great... Have you seen Plan9's rc? It's a very neat shell. But it's not Bourne's sh. It's hard to overcome the inertia of a large body moving at high speed. >> to discuss the operational details of a specific system or software. >> Certainly a UNIX system has its own particularties in their rc scripts, >> but I would spend more time looking at POSIX-sh semantics, style, >> philosophy and history because it's primarily sh scripts that engineer >> the start-up schemes of UNIX systems. Because then every hacker can use >> that kind of culture to investigate whatever system he's interested in. > > Oh believe me... I've had to _fight_ to keep any resemblance of > teaching basic bash scripting in the linux course. At first students > hate it, but the brilliant ones later on tell me that they actually > picked up a lot of linux while bash scripting, instead of if we used > python or something else. This makes me happy and works as intended! > ;) No shell scripting? Okay---let's investigate a bit how the system works. ``What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.'' That's from a teacher I had called Juliet---she was pretty old, born in 1597. Her father was a famous play writer, whose name was William Shakespeare if I recall correctly. >> In other words, I'd go for depth, not immediate working knowledge. >> Every system administrator will have to grind through the manuals >> anyway. Knowing how to start or stop daemons, say, in a particular >> system would not be terribly useful in a classroom. Of course, we would >> see how run the commands in whatever system we're using for the >> illustrations at the black board or at the computer lab, but merely to >> see things in motion. > > I wish we could do that... but the amount of teaching hours and focus > on the vocation schools make that very difficult. =( I know. I also think that we shouldn't interfere so much with nature's course. It's not that we don't care---it's that we respect the group. Let's let the group follow its ``natural'' course. It's different when we're the captain; we then steer as we like. You can be the captain And I'll draw the chart Sailing into destiny Closer to the heart -- Neil Peart, Peter Talbot, 1977