[TUHS] Were cron and at done at the same time? Or one before the other?

[Bakul Shah]

Ah .. but I don’t know if they did! The implication that Pascal folks like complexity seems strange as Pascal is far simpler than C++ (not much larger than C) and C++ is no more type safe than C (both are less type safe than Pascal). Anyway I will stop now! 

> On Dec 9, 2020, at 8:11 AM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Ah .. but all the Pascal folks got on the C++ bandwagon when it was clear C had won.  Frankly, the death of C++ IMO was all the crap added too it, but we have moved in COFF territory and off of Unix and Unix philosophy I think.
> 
>> On Wed, Dec 9, 2020 at 11:01 AM Bakul Shah <bakul at iitbombay.org> wrote:
>> please don’t blame c++ on pascal folks. stroustrup had nothing to do with pascal.  
>> 
>>>> On Dec 9, 2020, at 7:41 AM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Amen Doug.
>>> 
>>>> On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 11:36 PM M Douglas McIlroy <m.douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>>>> To paraphrase John Cocke (speaking about Fortran): one must understand
>>>> that Unix commands are not a logical language. They are a natural
>>>> language--in the sense that they developed by organic evolution, not
>>>> "intelligent design".
>>> But I offer a suggestion that another dimension that should be forgotten in time scale and the economics within.
>>> 
>>> When things evolve they do so on different clocks that are not necessarily linear.   i.e. what was 'better' (winning) today, but might not be considered so tomorrow, however could yet prove otherwise sometime later.  I use programming languages as a great example...   There was a huge C vs Pascal debate, that C 'won' - but I've always said the rise of C++ came from the Pascal folks that could say "C didn't win."  From the ashes of C++ we have Java, Go, and Rust. 
>>> 
>>> My point is that   "intelligent design" doesn't necessarily guarantee goodness or for that matter,complete logical thinking.
>>> 
>>> My own take on this is what I call "Cole's Law"   Simple economics always beats sophisticated architecture.
>>> What you call organic evolution is what I think of what makes the best economic sense for the user and that is a function of the time scale and available resources at the time of creation/deployment.
>>> 
>>> Clem
>>> 
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