Comment by krick | Hacker News Reader

Comment by krick | Hacker News Reader

I totally agree that all software sucks, but, unfortunately, we have to use something and the list of alternatives isn't really impressing (maybe because it's outdated, idk).

> C, Go, Limbo.

It reminds me of some story about OpenSSL and… well. Yeah, Python sucks, Ruby sucks, but we have to use something for scripting and everything else sucks more, so… Also, Rust is more appropriate in list of alternatives, I guess.

> Perl, Ruby. ->> rc, awk.

I guess it's only about text processing inside of shell, so, ok, but it's only because our best shells still are awful. I guess shell of the future is something more like iPython, that is, something that allows to do real programming, so there won't be need for cryptic-syntax text processing tools. Yeah, not unix-way. Rc? I doubt.

> GCC. ->> 8c, tcc.

clang, you mean?

> Tk, textual interfaces.

Just no. Textual interfaces are the best, surely, but not always enough. And Tk is simple, sure, but cannot do everything Qt can. So, again, everything sucks.

> Vim, Emacs, nano, Eclipse, ->> Acme, Sam, ed.

So why it happens I never heard of Acme or Sam before? Maybe "ed" in that list could provide some insights?

> UTF-8.

Sure, but unfortunately it's slow as you don't have static offsets, so sometimes you have to use UTF-32 while processing.

> IM

Everything sucks, alternatives aren't any better. Well, may be only a little.

> PDF --> PS(PostScript), DjVu.

What about copying text?

> EPUB --> DjVu.

Really? What about editing? What about reflowable content? What was he thinking wen writing it? FB2 is an "alternative" (but sucks too).

> sed 11q

11q yourself.

>> GCC. ->> 8c, tcc. > clang, you mean? I think I'm safe in answering "No" for uriel here. I think he was probably watching clang warily to see how it would develop, but he didn't pay so much attention to software for a couple of years before he died, and it's been a couple of years since then. For my part, Gcc 4.x has done a lot to put me off Linux development or even bug fixing, but I've no experience worth mentioning with Clang. 8c is Plan 9's C compiler for x86, along with 5c (ARM), 2c (68020), kc (SPARC), etc etc. The set was written by Ken Thompson. It's stable, it's got some sensible extensions (which Gcc didn't have until the GccGo project), and it doesn't kick up a fuss for nothing. Tcc is a "tiny C compiler", and as such I assume it also doesn't raise errors over nothing.

I'm pretty sure Rust didn't exist when uriel last touched that page, too.

I have to agree everything sucks in interfaces. Tk was one thing I never agreed with uriel on. I suspect he only put it there to have something proper-GUI-ish in the right-hand column.

>> Vim, Emacs, nano, Eclipse, ->> Acme, Sam, ed. > So why it happens I never heard of Acme or Sam before? Maybe "ed" in that list could provide some insights? Because text editor freaks revile the mouse. Sam and Acme both require a mouse. Did you know the mouse was invented for text editing? I have fairly serious motor control issues; in non-medical terms I'm so clumsy they call it a medical condition, but despite that I really can't understand why some people can't just use a mouse to place the text cursor, or even select. I wonder if they're put off by "proper" GUI programs, many of which require really excessive switching between keyboard and mouse. Acme requires the mouse for all editing operations other than inserting text but surprisingly I find it doesn't require nearly as much switching between mouse and keyboard as many "proper" GUI programs. Sam requires even less, it's basically a much-enhanced ed with the option to place the cursor or select text by the mouse if you want. Sam also has this funky feature of running the 'terminal' on a different machine to the back end, so you can have mouse-based editing over slow networks.

>> UTF-8. > Sure, but unfortunately it's slow as you don't have static offsets, so sometimes you have to use UTF-32 while processing. You can use any internal format you like without need for byte order marks, which I think is what uriel particularly hated about UTF-32.

On document formats I have to agree with you, copying editing and reflowing text do matter. I think pocket-sized devices just weren't a part of uriel's world. Someone did buy him an iPhone at one point, but that was late in his career.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com