Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail
From: rbowman <bowman@montana.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Over-Elaborate Shell Scripting
Date: 14 Mar 2026 03:19:56 GMT
Lines: 31
Message-ID: <n1k2erFttbkU3@mid.individual.net>
References: <10otpi4$1opu8$3@dont-email.me> <10otrqi$1p9ft$1@dont-email.me> <10ou2q9$1qp29$1@dont-email.me> <10oucet$vo4d$2@news.xmission.com> <10ov0al$27u8r$1@dont-email.me> <10ov8u5$2coog$1@dont-email.me> <10ovrds$2jl1v$2@dont-email.me> <10ovuk2$2lsp1$2@dont-email.me> <10p022n$2n0mu$1@dont-email.me> <6uOdnX-c6IPxPC70nZ2dnZfqn_GdnZ2d@giganews.com> <10p0uld$30rut$17@dont-email.me> <10p113p$358kj$1@dont-email.me> <10p21cj$3kl4p$6@dont-email.me>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Trace: individual.net ifWRFKrlSWSMGdINkagIgQXlKbjWqeTIsb5c0L4iwA5aU8ij7t
Cancel-Lock: sha1:D/QVdxcWTUYvo3twZeLuWWHYTvM= sha256:Ft0PqrzgLHv/8prFlBokVZ68gAMOM6D5sZqb8NQJxnk=
User-Agent: Pan/0.162 (Pokrosvk)
Xref: csiph.com comp.unix.shell:26719 comp.os.linux.misc:82957

On Fri, 13 Mar 2026 21:59:47 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

> On Fri, 13 Mar 2026 12:48:56 +0000, Pancho wrote:
> 
>> VAX Basic was widely used on major banking systems. Excel/VBA was
>> everywhere.
> 
> Not any more, thank goodness.
> 
>> Chruch-Turing Thesis - different languages are just syntactic sugar.
> 
> Ever wonder why we don’t write real-world computer programs using
> Turing’s universal tape machine?
> 
> There’s a reason why “computer science” and “mathematics” are quite
> different subjects ...

'Computer science' is ambiguous and in some cases refers to rarefied  
abstractions that are fairly useless. There should be 'practical 
programming' or some other discipline that I don't think falls under 
mathematics.

I think that goes back to the '60s. RPI and many other colleges did not 
have a CS program. I forget what the course designation was for FORTRAN IV 
programming but they didn't know what to do with it and put it in the math 
department. 

Apropos, Tony Hoare died last week but Quicksort lives on.