[TUHS] Tech Sq elevator (Was: screen editors)

[Kevin Bowling]

I honestly can't tell if this is genius level snark :) in case you're
sincere we generally go to great lengths to build up data types and
structures (in C lingo) when programming only to tear those useful
attributes off often at inopportune times.  Basically type
systems/type safety have been too expensive or too difficult to use
through history.

Think of sitting at an SQL prompt as a counterpoint.  You can pretty
easily get at the underlying representation and relationships of the
data and the output is just a side effect.  Not saying SQL is the
ultimate answer, just that most people have a bit of experience with
it and UNIX so can mentally compare the two for themselves and see the
pros and cons to preserving the underlying representations.

Regards,
Kevin

On Sun, Jan 12, 2020 at 1:34 PM Jon Steinhart <jon at fourwinds.com> wrote:
>
> Kevin Bowling writes:
> > This is kind of illustrative of the '60s acid trip that perpetuates in
> > programming "Everything's a string maaaaan".  The output is seen as
> > truth because the representation is for some reason too hard to get at
> > or too hard to cascade through the system.
> >
> > There's a total comedy of work going on in the unix way of a wc
> > pipeline versus calling a length function on a list.  Nonetheless, the
> > unix pipeline was and is often magnitude easier for a single user to
> > get at.  This kind of thing is amusing and endearing to me about our
> > profession in modern day.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Kevin
>
> Can you please elaborate?  I read your post, and while I can see that it
> contains English words I can't make any sense out of what you said.
>
> Thanks,
>         Jon