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From: Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mobileactivedefense.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system
Subject: Re: UNIX(*)/ Linux history & system design
Date: Tue, 06 May 2014 15:09:19 +0100
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crankypuss <crankypuss@nomail.invalid> writes:
> On 05/05/2014 05:17 PM, David Brown wrote:
>> On 06/05/14 00:02, crankypuss wrote:
>>> On 05/05/2014 02:31 PM, Rainer Weikusat wrote:
>>>> crankypuss <crankypuss@nomail.invalid> writes:
>>>
>>> <lots snipped>
>>>
>>>>> Some seem to disagree with that view, but then some people blindly
>>>>> parse command output with sed and use that to drive system-critical
>>>>> functionality; go figure.
>>>>
>>>> I did a lot of shell-programming when I was working on 'embeddded Linux
>>>> project' some years ago because that was the most convenient programming
>>>> language available to me in that environment (ARM9 machine language
>>>> and C
>>>> being the other options) and 'sed' was the most sophisticated
>>>> text-processing tool available to me. What's wrong with using it?
>>>
>>> I know nothing about "ARM9 machine language" but if C was available, yet
>>> you used bash/sed, you must have been in one bigassed hurry or had some
>>> extremely simple requirements.  I'm sure your performed your job as
>>> expected and were rewarded accordingly.
>>
>> Someone who writes a C program when a simple bash/sed script could do
>> the task, would be failing to do their job as expected.  One of the
>> reasons Linux (and other *nix flavours) have multiple languages and
>> tools is that different tools are better for different jobs, and that
>> often it is the developer's time that is important rather than the
>> systems run time.  A developer who thinks C is the answer to every
>> question is like a carpenter armed only with a hammer.
>>
>> In the embedded Linux systems I have worked on, the final system used C,
>> Python, Perl, C++, and bash.  I don't think sed was used, except as part
>> of the makefiles.
>>
>
> Indeed, it is the developer's time that is important, because that is
> what the employer has purchased.  Most employees are not very good at
> building tools, and are as shortsighted as their employers.  Tools
> like sed have been magically provided to them, nobody ever had reason
> to write those because they were just magically there.  Far better to
> simply use what has been provided, as expected, rather than building a
> library of C subroutines that puts knocking out a small utility on the
> same level of effort as debugging a bash/sed script

[...]

This has indeed been done in the past: The guy who couldn't get his
(Perl) scripts to work reasonably well within a reasonable time was
called Rasmus Lehrdorf and he named his library of C subroutines the
'Personal Homepage Tools', better known as 'PHP'.