This is off-topic to the topic which I raised, and to which people
answered only by replying to someone else, who had different issues.

However, the topic of religious (or holy) wars in this context is an
interesting topic to explore at its own right, so I'm accepting the
challenge.

It seems to me that religious wars are about choice between two (or
more) approaches, which are more or less equivalent - but require some
time investment to switch from one to the other.

The famous example of vi vs. emacs religious war illustrates this point.
Both editors are powerful text editors, and both have some sort of
scripting capabilities.  However, to switch from one to the other
requires some time investment - to learn the other editor, to cultivate
different mental habits, to re-create one's personal list of scripts,
tips, riffs and shortcuts.

However, people typically do not defend their editor choices by invoking
the expense of conversion to the other editor.  They prefer to invent
all kinds of arguments to justify their original editor choice, made 10
years ago.

                                 --- Omer

On Sun, 2007-09-02 at 08:43 -0700, Omer Shapira wrote:
> Is this a holy war?
>
> On 8/26/07, Omer Zak <w1@...> wrote:
>         Currently I use emacs and makefiles to develop code in
>         projects, which
>         use C++, Python and PHP.
>         I am considering whether to switch to a "true" IDE, such as
>         KDevelop or
>         Eclipse.
>
>         What is the community's opinion about IDEs?
>         Any other Free Software IDEs I overlooked?
>         Which IDE is, in your opinion, better and for which
>         language/s?

--
My Commodore 64 is suffering from slowness and insufficiency of memory;
and its display device is grievously short of pixels.  Can anyone help?
My own blog is at http://www.zak.co.il/tddpirate/

My opinions, as expressed in this E-mail message, are mine alone.
They do not represent the official policy of any organization with which
I may be affiliated in any way.
WARNING TO SPAMMERS:  at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html

On Sun, Sep 02, 2007, Omer Zak wrote about "Religious Wars (was: Re:
[hackers-il] KDevelop vs. Eclipse vs.?Emacs)":
>..
> However, the topic of religious (or holy) wars in this context is an
> interesting topic to explore at its own right, so I'm accepting the
> challenge.
>
> It seems to me that religious wars are about choice between two (or
> more) approaches, which are more or less equivalent - but require some
> time investment to switch from one to the other.

I don't fully agree. Such "wars" indeed exist, but are faught mainly by
trolls, who, for example, pop up on a Linux list and start debating whether
you should use Fedora, Debian or Ubuntu, when everyone knows that these are
basically permutations of more-or-less the same features, and if choice X
has some feature not in choice Y, then the next version of choice Y will surely
have it, and some new feature that X doesn't have.

The wars become more interesting, and more "religious", when the choices
are not equivalent, and both sides acklowedge specific differences between
the two choices - they just can't agree if the difference is good, or bad.

In real religions, for example, everyone agrees that a major difference between
Judaism and Christianity is Jesus Christ - it's just that Christians think
this is a *good* thing in christianity, and Jews think it's a *bad* thing.
Similarly, in software,

> The famous example of vi vs. emacs religious war illustrates this point.
> Both editors are powerful text editors, and both have some sort of
> scripting capabilities.  However, to switch from one to the other

Actually, the VI/Emacs religious war broke out and continued when there was
a real difference between those editor's philosophy. Emacs indeed had powerful
scripting capabilities, but vi had none (it had a simple configuration file,
~/.exrc, but you couldn't call that scripting by a longshot). Emacs' camp
thought this made Emacs obviously better, while vi's camp disagreed and
ridiculed Emacs' scripting (saying things like "Emacs is a great operating
system, but it's missing a good editor). A second "religious" argument
between the vi and emacs camps was the style of keyboard binding. The vi
camp believed in "modal" binding (you have insert mode, and command mode)
and in combinations of single-key commands, while the emacs camp believed
in global binding (a key does the same thing everywhere) and key combinations
(liek control-alt-a). Each camp thought the other's method sucks.

Of course, these VI/Emacs wars are a thing of the 80s. Today, both XEmacs
and Vim have GUIs and scripting languages, and the differences between the
two editors are indeed starting to look cosmetic, rather than fundumental.
Both editors are starting to look like operating systems, rather than
editors ;-)


> requires some time investment - to learn the other editor, to cultivate
> different mental habits, to re-create one's personal list of scripts,
> tips, riffs and shortcuts.

This doesn't explain the "holy war" aspect. If I have a lot of scripts and
knowledge about program X, why would that automatically send me to mailing
lists and write that Y sucks?

I think that I would write that Y sucks, only when I believe Y really sucks,
i.e., not only am I used to X, but there are significant differences between
X and Y which - at least to me - don't look like something consmetic or
"what I'm used to", but rather very important differences.

For example, as you probably know, I use zsh. I settled on zsh as my favorite
shell around 15 years ago - after having previously used ksh and bourne shell.
While Zsh is my favorite shell, I have nothing really bad to say about Bash.
It doesn't suck - it's probably great, just isn't as great as zsh ;-) So you
won't catch me slandering bash in mailing lists and joining crusades against
it. On the other hand, I do think that csh sucks, and can explain my reasoning.
I *will* join any crusade against csh that you invite me to... Because I
believe that csh is really inferior to zsh (and bash) - it's not just a
historic choice - and I don't want newbies to fall into the trap of learning
it.

--
Nadav Har'El                        |     Wednesday, Sep  5 2007, 22 Elul 5767
nyh@...             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |The path of least resistance is what
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |makes rivers and politicians crooked.

Excellent resource on general programming articles:

http://brsx.co.uk/ProgandDevelop/Articles/articles.asp

On Wednesday September 5 2007, Arik Baratz wrote:
> You mean, this violation of the Creative Commons license should be reported
> to Wikipedia... Gotcha.
A nice example of such theft is the notorious enci.ru website, which features
a recursive ripoff of ru.wikipedia.org, with blind search and replace of
all "wiki" into "Encyclo" (in Russian, "w" and "v" map to the same letter),
coining such memes as "Encyclongs", both as people and a NASA space program
consisting of two probes, "Encyclong-1" and "Encyclong-2"; "bolsheEncylo"
(bolsheviks), "Welcome to Encyclopedia - a free encyclopedia" and so on...
Later on, all the fuss turned out to be a clever virus marketing PR...


--
Sincerely Yours,
Michael Vasiliev

"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show
their absence!"
			 -- Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

In relation to "religious" or "holy" wars in computers, I would like
to mention the two major world wars: PC vs. Macintosh and Windows vs.
Linux (and of course, all other versions of OS).  I would like to
relate to the second world war: Windows vs. Linux.  Although I like
very much the concept of Open Source Free Software, and I hate very
much the concepts of proprietary software, copyrights, software
license, closed source software and software monopolies, I personally
find it very difficult to switch from Windows to any version of Linux
I tried.  And when I think about most of the people I know who use
computers, I think it's almost impossible for them to stop using
Windows.  They are used to Windows, it's easy to use, all their
friends use it (so they can always share their knowledge with them)
and they can even get it for free (without paying) although it's not
always legal but nobody cares.  People want the work to be done.  And
as long as it's easier and/or takes less time to do the work with
Windows, that's what they will do.  I have seen computers in many
places - homes, offices, public places and also in other countries.
They all use Windows.  Most people use computers for surfing the web,
using e-mail and sometimes programs such as Word and Excel.  They
don't need anything more than a basic computer with Windows has.  So
with all the respect I have (and I have) for Free Software, I just
can't see how most of the population will stop using Windows and
switch to anything else.

The only way I can see people will do it, is if there will be an OS
which is 100% compatible with Windows, looks like Windows and people
would not feel any difference when using it.  Then nobody would object
it to be Free and Open Source.  But if people need to switch to
something new, something they don't know, while all their friends are
still using Windows, I don't see any chance that most of the
population will do it.  It's like driving on either the left or the
right side of the street.  The change is so big, so nobody wants to
change.  People keep driving on the same side they are used to.

I want all of you to have Shana Tova Umetuka - sweet and happy new
year to you and your family.  I wish you to learn new things, meet new
people and go to places you haven't been there before, and also come
back to loved places where you have been and meet again people you
know.

Best Regards,
Uri Even-Chen

On 9/2/07, Omer Zak <w1@...> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
> This is off-topic to the topic which I raised, and to which people
> answered only by replying to someone else, who had different issues.
>
> However, the topic of religious (or holy) wars in this context is an
> interesting topic to explore at its own right, so I'm accepting the
> challenge.
>
> It seems to me that religious wars are about choice between two (or
> more) approaches, which are more or less equivalent - but require some
> time investment to switch from one to the other.
>
> The famous example of vi vs. emacs religious war illustrates this point.
> Both editors are powerful text editors, and both have some sort of
> scripting capabilities. However, to switch from one to the other
> requires some time investment - to learn the other editor, to cultivate
> different mental habits, to re-create one's personal list of scripts,
> tips, riffs and shortcuts.
>
> However, people typically do not defend their editor choices by invoking
> the expense of conversion to the other editor. They prefer to invent
> all kinds of arguments to justify their original editor choice, made 10
> years ago.
>
> --- Omer
>
> On Sun, 2007-09-02 at 08:43 -0700, Omer Shapira wrote:
> > Is this a holy war?
> >
> > On 8/26/07, Omer Zak <w1@...> wrote:
> > Currently I use emacs and makefiles to develop code in
> > projects, which
> > use C++, Python and PHP.
> > I am considering whether to switch to a "true" IDE, such as
> > KDevelop or
> > Eclipse.
> >
> > What is the community's opinion about IDEs?
> > Any other Free Software IDEs I overlooked?
> > Which IDE is, in your opinion, better and for which
> > language/s?
>
> --
> My Commodore 64 is suffering from slowness and insufficiency of memory;
> and its display device is grievously short of pixels. Can anyone help?
> My own blog is at http://www.zak.co.il/tddpirate/
>
> My opinions, as expressed in this E-mail message, are mine alone.
> They do not represent the official policy of any organization with which
> I may be affiliated in any way.
> WARNING TO SPAMMERS: at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html
>
>

Hi,

I am happy to announce that we are going to have a
Perl Workshop in Israel still this year!

In order to give you the most time to prepare for it, it is scheduled
to be on 31st December, 2007.

It is going to be a one day workshop with either one or two rooms.
I am not sure yet.
We are going to have talks (if you submit them),
we plan to have job fair during the day
we'll allocate time for BOFs and project showcases
and I would be glad to receive ideas for other things to do.

The exact location is not final yet. We have reserved place in both
Ramat Efal and in Airport City but I'll consider other options as well
if someone helps me arrange the place.

The conference is managed using Act, the tool used
by the YAPCs and the various Perl Workshops throughout Europe
and the US.
You can already register on the web site:

http://act.perl.org.il/ilpw2007/

Registration is free and it is not a commitment in itself so even if you still
need company approval you can already do that.

Cost is not finalized yet, it will also depend on the sponsors we can attract.
Speakers can get in free of charge.

So go ahead, register on the web site or if you already have an account,
join this conference as well.

The first dead-line for talk submission is 7th October. If we have enough
good talks by that time we'll announce the schedule without waiting for others
to submit their talks.
The real dead-line is 19th October but I really hope we can do it earlier.
Remember, you only need to decide on the talk(s) and write an abstract
in order to submit the proposal.
You will need to write the talk only if is accepted.

regards and Shana Tova

Gabor

--
Gabor Szabo
http://www.szabgab.com/
Perl Training in Israel  http://www.pti.co.il/

See:

http://shlomif.livejournal.com/46776.html

for a mathematical riddle I posted on my blog.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish
--

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish      shlomif@...
Homepage:        http://www.shlomifish.org/

If it's not in my E-mail it doesn't happen. And if my E-mail is saying
one thing, and everything else says something else - E-mail will conquer.
     -- An Israeli Linuxer

Hi all!

We discussed the C-shell in these mailing lists before. A few days ago I
decided to set up the definitive anti-C-shell page, based on an email I
wrote, so I did:

http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/csh/

Comments are welcome.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

P.S: a Google search for 'anti csh' yields as first results some obscure
genetics pages:

http://www.google.com/search?q=anti+csh&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish      shlomif@...
Homepage:        http://www.shlomifish.org/

If it's not in my E-mail it doesn't happen. And if my E-mail is saying
one thing, and everything else says something else - E-mail will conquer.
     -- An Israeli Linuxer

On Sat, Oct 06, 2007, Shlomi Fish wrote about "[hackers-il] My "Stop Using (and
Teaching) C-Shell and Tcsh" Page":
> We discussed the C-shell in these mailing lists before. A few days ago I
> decided to set up the definitive anti-C-shell page, based on an email I
> wrote, so I did:
>
> http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/csh/
>
> Comments are welcome.

Good summary of CSH's problems and good links.

Another reason you missed  is this: if you have to learn just *one* shell,
make sure you learn bourne shell, not csh. Because the bourne shell is the
"standard shell" on Unix, and it - not csh - is the one that you'll always
be sure to find on any sort of Unix machine, and it - not csh - is the
language you'll find when you read other people's scripts on Unix machines
(makefiles, init scripts, rpm scripts, and so on).

What always baffles me is why people learn or teach csh at all. With all its
downsides, bugs and problems (whether there are 5, 10 or 50 of those), what
exactly are its positive sides?

--
Nadav Har'El                        |      Sunday, Oct  7 2007, 25 Tishri 5768
nyh@...             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Cats aren't clean, they're just covered
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |with cat spit.

On 7 Oct 2007 11:06:51 -0000, alex@...  <alex@...> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> My e-mail has been changed.
> Please, re-send your e-mail to my new e-mail address which
> can be found at  http://www.breakt.co.il/~alexr/alex_very_secret_email.html
>
> Thank you!
>
> Alex
>

<rant>
I tell you, if I had a web site with a folder named "anti", I would
write a piece about these auto-responders there.

People, there is an RFC, and it's number is 2821. Please please
please, before you write any piece of software that deals with email,
be it an MUA, MTA or any piece of code, ESPECIALLY if said piece of
code runs unattended, DOUBLY SO if said piece of code responds to an
email message automatically. If you don't feel like reading the RFC,
don't write the code.

Unfortunately, if you do decide to not write the code and use an
existing piece of code, you're still not guaranteed that the code is
compliant. Actually it is un-compliant, more likely than not. The sad
state of affairs is that indeed people don't write good compliant code
when it comes to auto-responders, and there's more crap out there than
anything else. Perhaps because writing an auto-responder or a vacation
program is a task that looks insignificant. I don't really know.

The two golden rules about auto-responders, which unfortunately most
do not comply with are as follows:

1. If you are an automatic piece of code replying to email, you MUST
reply to the envelope address (and if you're not an MTA, to the
address in the "Return-Path" header, which is where the MTA should
have put the envelope address). It's a MUST. If there is no envelope
address, do refrain from sending the message.

All (well written) lists put their bounce address there, which will,
in short order, unsubscribe the user from the list due to excessive
bounces. Other lists put the list owner there, which is the person
responsible for bounces. What you should absolutely MUST NOT do is use
the "From" or the "Reply-To" headers. They're only meant for MUAs. You
have no business looking there.

2. If you generate an automatic reply, you MUST leave the envelope
address empty. This is an equally important rule, because together
with rule 1 it will stop mail-loops from being formed. An empty
envelope address is perfectly legal and conforming to the
aforementioned RFC.

Quoting from [1]:
    If there is a delivery failure after acceptance of a message, the
    receiver-SMTP MUST formulate and mail a notification message.  This
    notification MUST be sent using a null ("<>") reverse path in the
    envelope.  The recipient of this notification MUST be the address
    from the envelope return path (or the Return-Path: line).  However,
    if this address is null ("<>"), the receiver-SMTP MUST NOT send a
    notification.

Alex's auto-responder fails on both counts, which makes me want to
send him a message with himself in the "From" header about 100 times,
just to see his hosting and traffic costs go up as his auto-responder
goes into a loop. But I wouldn't do it. I'm not that bad.

I'd like to mention one particular widespread non-compliant program,
Microsoft Outlook's Out Of Office Assistant (which actually executes
inside Microsoft Exchange). Yes, it's non-compliant. It half-redeems
itself by saving a cache of the addresses it responded to and refrains
from sending messages to them again. Let's see if Alex's
auto-responder does that, I'll know as soon as I'll send this
message...
</rant>

Take care, do good.

-- Arik

[1] RFC 2821 section 6.1

On Sun, Oct 07, 2007, Arik Baratz wrote about "Annoying stupid non-conforming
auto-responders! (was: Re: SPAM -> Re: [hackers-il] My "Stop Using (and
Teaching) C-Shell and Tcsh" Page)":
> I tell you, if I had a web site with a folder named "anti", I would
> write a piece about these auto-responders there.

My two favorite out-of-office messages are this:

    "You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the
     office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn't have received anything
     at all."

    "I will be unable to delete all the unread, worthless emails you send me
     until I return from vacation. Please be patient and your mail will be
     deleted in the order it was received."


:-)


--
Nadav Har'El                        |      Sunday, Oct  7 2007, 25 Tishri 5768
nyh@...             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Cats aren't clean, they're just covered
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |with cat spit.

Hello,

   I have someone in my company who needs a basic primer of things like
"What is an OS?" and "What are the differences between Linux and
Windows?" and "What is Python?" "What is PHP?" "What is shell scripting?"

    She doesn't know how to DO these things. She just has to know what
they ARE. What's more, she needs this information in Hebrew. (I know
where to look for all of that in English...)

    Anyone have any good suggestions?

- Lisha

Arik's rant deserves a Nobel prize.

Arik described the problem, where to find the solution, and even
(briefly) the solution itself.

I am honored to save the rant in my archival folders, for future
reference.
                                  --- Omer

On Sun, 2007-10-07 at 04:44 -0700, Arik Baratz wrote:
> <rant>
[... snipped ...]
> People, there is an RFC, and it's number is 2821.
[... snipped ...]
> </rant>

--
One does not make peace with enemies.  One makes peace with former
enemies.
My own blog is at http://www.zak.co.il/tddpirate/

My opinions, as expressed in this E-mail message, are mine alone.
They do not represent the official policy of any organization with which
I may be affiliated in any way.
WARNING TO SPAMMERS:  at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html

On Sunday 07 October 2007, Elizabeth Sterling wrote:
> Hello,
>
>   I have someone in my company who needs a basic primer of things like
> "What is an OS?" and "What are the differences between Linux and
> Windows?" and "What is Python?" "What is PHP?" "What is shell scripting?"
>
>    She doesn't know how to DO these things. She just has to know what
> they ARE. What's more, she needs this information in Hebrew.

Well, I suppose I can write this thing myself - it shouldn't take too long.

But I need to know what exactly you want me to cover. In bullet point.
Otherwise I'll just answer what you said to the best of my knowledge.

> (I know
> where to look for all of that in English...)

Can you give a good resource for that in English (preferably not too long and
to the point) with a licence that allows translations? I suppose translating
it would be easier.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

>
>    Anyone have any good suggestions?
>
> - Lisha



--

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish      shlomif@...
Homepage:        http://www.shlomifish.org/

If it's not in my E-mail it doesn't happen. And if my E-mail is saying
one thing, and everything else says something else - E-mail will conquer.
     -- An Israeli Linuxer

On Sun, Oct 07, 2007, Elizabeth Sterling wrote about "[hackers-il] [off-topic]
Hebrew Sites about basic stuff":
> Hello,
>
>   I have someone in my company who needs a basic primer of things like
> "What is an OS?" and "What are the differences between Linux and
> Windows?" and "What is Python?" "What is PHP?" "What is shell scripting?"

Whenever I have such questions (not these specific questions, of course ;-))
there is one place I refer to - Wikipedia. You might want to look at the
Hebrew Wikipedia's entries on these things, and see if they are satisfactory.

--
Nadav Har'El                        |      Monday, Oct  8 2007, 26 Tishri 5768
nyh@...             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |The meek shall inherit the Earth, for
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |they are too timid to refuse it.

Hi!

Sorry for the late response.

On Monday 04 June 2007, Nadav Har'El wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 04, 2007, Shlomi Fish wrote about "Re: [hackers-il] Solving
Homework in Pairs":
> > P.S: and just for the record - I still think I'm right when claiming it
> > is a better idea to allow working in pairs. I find that Nadav has still
> > avoided refuting my reasons.
>
> Ok, let's make one last attempt, even though I think I already answered
> you.
>
> First, let's assume that you mean really "working in pairs" (because the
> more common requirement is "handing in pairs" and nobody checks how you
> worked).
>
> The reason one studies for a degree is, in my opinion, three-fold. ONE is
> to learn material. TWO is to get experience in solving difficult problems
> in your field (not necessarily the mundane problems you'll be asked to
> solve in your first year on the job - a university is not a vocational
> school). THREE is to "get on the same page" as the peers you'll be spending
> your professional life with - learn how they think, how they talk, how they
> cooperate, and so on.
>

I think reason #1 (repharsed a bit) - to get knowlege is the most important
one, followed by #2. Usually, #2 is seen as means to understand and integrate
this knowledge.

> Issue #3 - learning how to cooperate with your peers in your professional
> domain - is indeed important. You want future scientists and engineers to
> be able to talk to others using terms they understand, to work together,
> and so on. But how much emphasis should be given to this issue, vs. the
> other two (material and problem solving)? I believe that more emphasis
> should be given to the material and problem-solving skills, because of
> several reasons: these are wider and deeper areas than cooperation skills,
> they are harder and less natural for the typical student, and they are
> things a typical student would not be able to learn "on the job".

Right.

> So my belief is that a university should spend some time on issue #3 - it
> *should* teach terminology, nomenclemature and methodology that make it
> easy for researchers in its field to cooperate, and it should give the
> students some practical experience in cooperating - in the form of some
> pair-work courses, some cooperative project, or whatever. But it is my
> belief that the university should NOT turn each and every course into an
> exercise of cooperation. The reason there are a few dozen courses in a
> degree is because there are a few dozen subjects that need to be learned -
> not because cooperation has to be exercised a few dozen times.

What I said[1] (and you keep avoiding addressing) is that since the final exam
is the lion's share of the grade, then a student who completely relied on his
partner to prepare his exercises for him (and didn't otherwise study the
material on his own) will likely fail the course. (Assuming the test is not
fair, and other factors like that).

{{{
[1] - Point #1 in:

http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/education/opinion-on-the-technion\
/#why_pair_wise
}}}

So making the course pair wise, cannot cause a student to pass, because he
relied on his partner to do his work his him, and thus get an undeserved
grade.

>
> And I mentioned that when cooperation (pair work) is encouraged, care must
> be taken not to let it run wild. If students can finish an entire course
> not doing anything while their friend (or 5 friends, in the absurd example
> I mentioned in my last mail) do their work for them, it is simply not fair.
> This isn't a big problem when there are just a few courses like that
> (especially when in the Technion's undergraduate courses, there is normally
> a test in the end and that isn't done in pairs at all),

Exactly. I wasn't talking about a course whose score is 100% dependent on pair
work. By all means, a solitary test, on which most of the grade is based, is
a good idea.

> but if you "run
> wild" with the pair work idea, and every course is done completely in
> pairs, someone could concievably finish a degree without ever doing a
> thing, and without even violating any law (someone who buys solutions also
> can finish a degree without ever doing a thing - but at least this is
> considered illegal).



>
> I hope now you'll find that I answered your reasons. You don't have to
> agree with what I said, though ;-) Like I said, we can agree to disagree on
> this subject.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish      shlomif@...
Homepage:        http://www.shlomifish.org/

If it's not in my E-mail it doesn't happen. And if my E-mail is saying
one thing, and everything else says something else - E-mail will conquer.
     -- An Israeli Linuxer

On 10/6/07, Shlomi Fish <shlomif@...> wrote:
> We discussed the C-shell in these mailing lists before. A few days ago I
> decided to set up the definitive anti-C-shell page, based on an email I
> wrote, so I did:
>
> http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/csh/
>
Good page.  Definitely s/tcsh/bash/g is even more obvious than s/cvs/svn/g ;-)

But for those of us that find even {ba,z,k}sh unsatisfactory, I highly
recommend trying the Friendly Interactive SHell
<http://fishshell.org/>.  It fixes many things like quoting, innovates
in configuration and has interactive syntax-higlighted
multiline-editing completing-on-steroids prompt.

I do have to warn that it is still evolving, not perfectly stable, and
has performance problems.  So you might not want it as your login
shell yet, but it's definitely worth checking out.

See http://fishshell.org/wiki/moin.cgi/BashToFish for some highlights
and a quick start.


--
Beni Cherniavsky <cben@...> (I read email only on weekends)

Joyce hangs up an African mask and says "It cheers up the room."
Buffy: "It's angry at the room, Mom. It wants the room to suffer."
    -- `Dead Man's Party`, BtVS S03E02

On Friday 19 October 2007, Beni Cherniavsky wrote:
> On 10/6/07, Shlomi Fish <shlomif@...> wrote:
> > We discussed the C-shell in these mailing lists before. A few days ago I
> > decided to set up the definitive anti-C-shell page, based on an email I
> > wrote, so I did:
> >
> > http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/csh/
>
> Good page.  Definitely s/tcsh/bash/g is even more obvious than s/cvs/svn/g
> ;-)
>
> But for those of us that find even {ba,z,k}sh unsatisfactory, I highly
> recommend trying the Friendly Interactive SHell
> <http://fishshell.org/>.  It fixes many things like quoting, innovates
> in configuration and has interactive syntax-higlighted
> multiline-editing completing-on-steroids prompt.

My problem with FISH is that its syntax is incompatible with that of the
Bourne Shell, much less with bash. As such, I recommend people not to get use
it, for fear it will become the next csh/tcsh. I'd rather improve bash or zsh
in areas that one feels they need improvement, than create something
incompatible.

So stay away.

And I daresay I don't find bash unsatisfactory. I'm probably still using a
very small of its functionality, and it has many dark corners that I haven't
investigated yet. I still haven't even found enough motivation to use zsh
instead of bash.

And I'm still finding myself using Perl for many non-trivial scripting
problems.

>
> I do have to warn that it is still evolving, not perfectly stable, and
> has performance problems.  So you might not want it as your login
> shell yet, but it's definitely worth checking out.
>

I'd rather see the good FISH ideas integrated into bash.

> See http://fishshell.org/wiki/moin.cgi/BashToFish for some highlights
> and a quick start.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish      shlomif@...
Homepage:        http://www.shlomifish.org/

If it's not in my E-mail it doesn't happen. And if my E-mail is saying
one thing, and everything else says something else - E-mail will conquer.
     -- An Israeli Linuxer

On Friday 19 October 2007, Oron Peled wrote:
> On Friday, 19 בOctober 2007, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> > My problem with FISH is that...
>
> What? You of all people have a problem with FISH?
>

I don't have a problem with all fish, but some FISH are too FISHy and smell
bad especially if they stand for Friendly Interactive SHell or FISH for
short.

I should note that there's also the fish protocol:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Files_transferred_over_shell_protocol

which is a way to transfer files over ssh. It is pretty cool, and if you're
using KDE, you can try it out by using fish://myuser@myhost.tld/ using
Konqueror.

> [couldn't resist ;-]

Couldn't resist either.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish      shlomif@...
Homepage:        http://www.shlomifish.org/

If it's not in my E-mail it doesn't happen. And if my E-mail is saying
one thing, and everything else says something else - E-mail will conquer.
     -- An Israeli Linuxer

Hi!

Can the admins of this mailing list please unsubscribe the alex@...
address, as it sends this message to the poster for every post to the list?

It's getting annoying.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: RE: Re: [Haifux] [hackers-il] My "Stop Using (and Teaching) C-Shell
and Tcsh" Page
Date: Saturday 20 October 2007
From: alex@...
To: shlomif@...

Hi,

My e-mail has been changed.
Please, re-send your e-mail to my new e-mail address which
can be found at  SNIPPED

Thank you!

Alex

-------------------------------------------------------

--

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish      shlomif@...
Homepage:        http://www.shlomifish.org/

If it's not in my E-mail it doesn't happen. And if my E-mail is saying
one thing, and everything else says something else - E-mail will conquer.
     -- An Israeli Linuxer

On 10/19/07, Shlomi Fish <shlomif@...> wrote:
> On Friday 19 October 2007, Beni Cherniavsky wrote:
> > But for those of us that find even {ba,z,k}sh unsatisfactory, I highly
> > recommend trying the Friendly Interactive SHell
> > <http://fishshell.org/>.  It fixes many things like quoting, innovates
> > in configuration and has interactive syntax-higlighted
> > multiline-editing completing-on-steroids prompt.
>
> My problem with FISH is that its syntax is incompatible with that of the
> Bourne Shell, much less with bash. As such, I recommend people not to get use
> it, for fear it will become the next csh/tcsh. I'd rather improve bash or zsh
> in areas that one feels they need improvement, than create something
> incompatible.
>
> So stay away.
>
It won't become the next csh because it's not vastly inferior ;-).  It
just as real a language as bash, only different.  Whether to use it or
not is a pesonal decision, depending on whether one likes it, being an
early adopter, etc.

Of course, as Nadav says, if somebody is going to learn just one
shell, the only sensible recommendation is [ba]sh.

> And I daresay I don't find bash unsatisfactory. I'm probably still using a
> very small of its functionality, and it has many dark corners that I haven't
> investigated yet. I still haven't even found enough motivation to use zsh
> instead of bash.
>
I find any shell following Bourne shell semantics of quoting and
variable expansion inherently broken, because it takes too much hassle
to write correct code.  IMMV.

> And I'm still finding myself using Perl for many non-trivial scripting
> problems.
>
Obviously.  Command-line glue is just not flexible enough to compete
with real data structures and interfaces that you find in a real
language.  Also, shell scripts suffer from much higher software rot
due to dependence on numerous external programs.

> I'd rather see the good FISH ideas integrated into bash.
>
Some of them (mostly the interactive features) could, and probably
should, be integrated.
But the syntax improvements can't be sh-compatible, because it
explicitly sets out fix sh syntax mistakes.

--
Beni Cherniavsky <cben@...> (I read email only on weekends)

On Saturday 20 October 2007, Beni Cherniavsky wrote:
> On 10/19/07, Shlomi Fish <shlomif@...> wrote:
> > On Friday 19 October 2007, Beni Cherniavsky wrote:
> > > But for those of us that find even {ba,z,k}sh unsatisfactory, I highly
> > > recommend trying the Friendly Interactive SHell
> > > <http://fishshell.org/>.  It fixes many things like quoting, innovates
> > > in configuration and has interactive syntax-higlighted
> > > multiline-editing completing-on-steroids prompt.
> >
> > My problem with FISH is that its syntax is incompatible with that of the
> > Bourne Shell, much less with bash. As such, I recommend people not to get
> > use it, for fear it will become the next csh/tcsh. I'd rather improve
> > bash or zsh in areas that one feels they need improvement, than create
> > something incompatible.
> >
> > So stay away.
>
> It won't become the next csh because it's not vastly inferior ;-).  It
> just as real a language as bash, only different.  Whether to use it or
> not is a pesonal decision, depending on whether one likes it, being an
> early adopter, etc.

It still may introduce bad habits when using Bash for scripts.

>
> Of course, as Nadav says, if somebody is going to learn just one
> shell, the only sensible recommendation is [ba]sh.

Right.

>
> > And I daresay I don't find bash unsatisfactory. I'm probably still using
> > a very small of its functionality, and it has many dark corners that I
> > haven't investigated yet. I still haven't even found enough motivation to
> > use zsh instead of bash.
>
> I find any shell following Bourne shell semantics of quoting and
> variable expansion inherently broken, because it takes too much hassle
> to write correct code.  IMMV.

Can you give some examples for that? And if so - how is FISH better?

>
> > And I'm still finding myself using Perl for many non-trivial scripting
> > problems.
>
> Obviously.  Command-line glue is just not flexible enough to compete
> with real data structures and interfaces that you find in a real
> language.  Also, shell scripts suffer from much higher software rot
> due to dependence on numerous external programs.

Well, there are standards defining a subset of the behaviour of such programs.

>
> > I'd rather see the good FISH ideas integrated into bash.
>
> Some of them (mostly the interactive features) could, and probably
> should, be integrated.
> But the syntax improvements can't be sh-compatible, because it
> explicitly sets out fix sh syntax mistakes.

I see.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish      shlomif@...
Homepage:        http://www.shlomifish.org/

If it's not in my E-mail it doesn't happen. And if my E-mail is saying
one thing, and everything else says something else - E-mail will conquer.
     -- An Israeli Linuxer

Hi all!

Today's "Ozy and Millie" strip seems to carry an important message about
security:

http://www.ozyandmillie.org/d/20071119.html

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish      shlomif@...
Homepage:        http://www.shlomifish.org/

I'm not an actor - I just play one on T.V.

Does anyone know what is happening to the Wikipedia static images (in
http://static.wikipedia.org/downloads/)?

It seems that there are no static images for English after April 2007.
The September 2007 static image for Hebrew seems to be incomplete.
The last complete static image for Hebrew is from April 2007.

Where can I find news and updates about the Wikipedia static images:
- When is the next static image dump scheduled?
- Why does a static image dump not properly cover all languages?
- What files are omitted? (I found that the Hebrew image dump does not
include uploaded multimedia files in he/upload subdirectory)
- Where can I download a dump of the omitted files (if at all)?

By the way, beware of the high compression ratios of the 7z archive
format used by Wikipedia.  The April 2007 Hebrew archive is 217MB long,
and it decompresses to 4198MB files (compression ratio of about 19).

                                     --- Omer

--
MS-Windows is the Pal-Kal of the PC world.
My own blog is at http://www.zak.co.il/tddpirate/

My opinions, as expressed in this E-mail message, are mine alone.
They do not represent the official policy of any organization with which
I may be affiliated in any way.
WARNING TO SPAMMERS:  at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html

As a token of my gratefulness for the enclosed misconfigured auto-reply
E-mail message, I am enclosing here the new E-mail address of Alex as
reported by his Web page for his former spammers to harvest, enjoy and
annoy:

   alex.rier@...

And I hope that when Alex changes again his E-mail address, that he'll
go to the trouble of unsubscribing the old one from the Hackers-IL
mailing list.  Or at least modernize his auto-replier software to avoid
auto-replying to senders of messages to mailing lists to which he is
subscribed.

                                                --- Omer

-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: alex@...
To: w1@...
Subject: RE: [hackers-il] Wikipedia Static Images
Date: 29 Nov 2007 14:31:19 -0000

Hi,

My e-mail has been changed.
Please, re-send your e-mail to my new e-mail address which
can be found at  http://www.breakt.co.il/~alexr/alex_very_secret_email.html

Thank you!

Alex




--
MS-Windows is the Pal-Kal of the PC world.
My own blog is at http://www.zak.co.il/tddpirate/

My opinions, as expressed in this E-mail message, are mine alone.
They do not represent the official policy of any organization with which
I may be affiliated in any way.
WARNING TO SPAMMERS:  at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html