Going Beyond Grep for Searching Source Code (ack | ag)

I want to give a shout-out to Andy Lester, the author of ack and this blog post. Before publishing, he asked me to review the text. He wanted to ensure it was factually correct and that I had no issues with his evaluation of ag. I suggested a few bits he could flesh-out, but I had no qualms with the original post. It was very courteous of him to go out of his way to make sure I was happy.

We don't communicate often, but every interaction I've had with Andy has been positive. So I'm a little disappointed when people compliment ag while disparaging ack. Yes, ag is faster. But it's not like ack is particularly slow. And as Andy's post points out, they do have different features. Even if you think ag strictly dominates, remember: If not for ack, ag would never have existed. The only reason I wrote ag was because I used ack all the time and wanted it to be faster.

It's bizarre how something so trivial can make people so opinionated. Andy and I make tools to search code. But looking at some of the discussion over the years, you'd think we we're working on competing cancer treatments.