Here's one of the best flames I've seen in recent history. Good job Tom!
tchrist@mox.perl.com (Tom Christiansen) writes:
> In comp.lang.perl, drussell@gisws6.rtpnc.epa.gov (DFRussell) writes
> the following (considering his address, you Americans out there might
> as well just consider it your tax dollars at work -- or perhaps waste):
>
> :until perl is shipped as a standard part of unix, it's use will
> :remain a religious issue.
>
> Your insights into certain matters are lamentably lacking. I entreat you
> to grant me but a few bytes of your disk and a few moments of your life to
> apprise you of some of these notable myopias from which you appear to
> suffer.
>
> Unix: Unix is a massive conglomeration of subtly incompatible yet
> deceptively similar operating systems. You cannot merely
> choose a system, point to it, and pronounce "This is Unix!"
> There is no officially blessed prototype from which all others
> derive. It used to be the case, at least colloquially, that
> Unix was defined to be whatever happened to be running on
> Dennis Ritchie's desk. Well, since Dennis now runs Plan 9 on
> his deck, this means we're probably nearly *ALL* out of luck.
> There are still systems out that don't support cut or paste;
> by the time they do, we'll all be using something else.
>
> SysAdmins: A Unix systems administrator can seldom afford to run on any
> given system precisely what its vendor has shipped and not a
> whit more. If they did, their customers (read: users) would
> in many cases stage a small rebel. While some enlightened
> vendors actually do ship tcsh, nvi, sendmail 8, and perl, the
> vast but diminishing majority are still caught up in proving
> that old customer support adage:
>
> It is easier to drive a camel through the eye of a needle
> than it is to get useful software into the hands of the
> customer.
>
> Consequently, Unix sysadmins (our Cybernetic Crisis Management
> Engineers) must do all they possibly can to present a seamless
> working environment for their users. In today's world of Unix
> systems administration, a reasonable working knowledge of Perl
> is nothing shy of indispensable, even though all you might use
> it for should to be to support the myriad useful Perl programs
> already written and distributed to the farthest reaches of the
> Net.
>
> Perl: Perl serves, amongst other things, to alleviate the suffering
> of users and systems administrators on Unix systems through a
> more expeditious, robust, predictable, portable, and uniform
> tool for their work than was previously available. To deprive
> these poor trenchworkers at wit's end such simple solace
> ranges between simple mean-spiritedness all the way to sadism
> most depraved. Most of us can attest through tortuous tales
> that we have wasted quite enough of our lives bashing our
> heads against those decrepit walls in which vendors are all
> too intent to immure us.
>
> Perl is a way through of this labyrinth. If you cannot fairly
> appraise its usefulness in taking arms against this outrageous
> situation, then may you walk in the convoluted corefiles of a
> congenitally brain-damaged /bin/sh all the days of your life.
>
> Religion: Religious issues are those which have no applicable
> objective criteria. It's not clear to what particular notion
> you're referring, but the viability and utility of a
> programming paradigm clearly lends itself to objective
> analysis more readily than it does to a leap of faith.
>
> Logic: Proof by assertion will not work. You may continue to
> repeat yourself ad infinitum, but until you construct reasoned
> arguments to defend your vacuous assertions, you're just
> making so much wind.
>
> Grammar: You write "it's use" above. While I can certainly condone the
> occasionally useful departure from the more accepted
> orthographic conventions, when this impedes legibility, it's
> really much easier on your reader if you'd just stick to its
> more common representation.
>
> USENET: One simply does not come to a newsgroup dedicated to subject
> foo and proceed to tell everyone there they're wasting their
> time with foo and if they think otherwise, they're religious
> bigots. This is generally referred to as bad netiquette, which
> is appears to be something for which you hold scant regard.
>
> Courtesy: "Yoh Perl bigot" isn't considered even vaguely polite, and you
> don't need a personal missive from Miss Manners to divine this.
>
> You do not appear to possess any deep understanding of Unix, systems
> administration, Perl, religion, logic, grammar, USENET, or even common
> courtesy, that hallmark of human decency. Could it then in fact be that
> you are merely Rush Limbaugh in cyberguise?
>
> --tom
> --
> "We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on
> when it's necessary to compromise."
> --Larry Wall in <1991Nov13.194420.28091@netlabs.com>
--
Steve Davis <strat@ksu.ksu.edu>
Kansas State University
Jesper Nilsson // dat92jni@ludat.lth.se or jesper@df.lth.se