Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 04:36:42 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: nate@mt.sri.com (Nate Williams) Cc: akm@zeus.theinternet.com.au, tlambert@primenet.com, nate@mt.sri.com, sgk@troutmask.apl.washington.edu, bs_13943_34262@adimus.de, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Fortran in the base system (was Re: sysinstall) Message-ID: <199812180436.VAA24884@usr06.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <199812180146.SAA04784@mt.sri.com> from "Nate Williams" at Dec 17, 98 06:46:03 pm
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> > | And the C compiler, while you are at it. > > > > I will personally hunt down and publically humiliate anyone who > > does this... > > Please don't fall into Terry's silly argument. He hasn't gotten into an > argument in 2-3 minutes and is missing it. Given a framework that is sufficiently less onerous than the current ports mechanism that a computer scientist would be willing to use it to install the C compiler is a good starting point for a mechanism that a physicist would be willing to use to install the FORTRAN compiler. Arguing that FORTRAN should be removed because some Physicist somewhere will probably be willing to stop doing physics long enough to maintain a language port (a problem for a Computer Scientist, that) is just plain silly. For these people, computers are tools, not ends in themselves, and when one tool stops being useful, they don't open up the hood and fix things, they change to a differnt tool that doesn't have the problem. To jump on Jordan's favorite analogy, the car, these guys are drivers, not mechanics, and they are so far afield from the guts of how the tool works (other than its applicability as a tool) that if the Os were a car and it ran out of gas, they would buy a new car rather than learn where the gas cap was. If you are going to go ripping "useless" things like FORTRAN out of FreeBSD, while as the same time adding "useful" things like Perl, then you might as well do it right. If a language that has been integral to a UNIX box's identity *as* a UNIX box since practically before there was such a thing as UNIX is going to be seperated into a component, then at least have the decency to seperate it in a useful way. This basically means that if you are going to break the OS into layered software, the layered software has to be as transparent to install as the OS itself. This *doesn't* mean that a typical physicist should have to trapse through a maze of twisty checkboxes in categories recognizable to computer scientists (and maybe technical lexicographers, but not physicists) which all look alike, just to install what was, historically, a base system component. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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