Re: [dev] [st] will global-less changes be wanted upstream?

From: Markus Wichmann <nullplan_AT_gmx.net>
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 12:35:18 +0200

On Sun, Aug 17, 2014 at 08:56:45AM +0200, Christoph Lohmann wrote:
> You are wrong. The approach to shuffle everything into object‐liked
> structures is what makes software development ill. Stop it now.

It would be hard for that statement to be more wrong, because what makes
software development sick is not a drive towards organization. Anyone
who ever tried to make zsnes run on a 64-bit machine should know that
much: They never use anything but globals there.

Although shuffling all the globals into a global super-object won't
really help with that, it can help to actually analyze the data flow and
make better optimizations.

What makes software development sick is lasagna code that never get's
simplified until runtime. So not only are you developing in a very high
stack of rather fragile applications, that whole stack also has to run
later on. (An example of having a high level of abstraction done right:
Haskell. You won't know what exactly the compiler will make of your
code, but it gets compiled to assembly and is not required to run your
code).

Otherwise, there's the bad habit of software companies to set really
stupid coding rules (like "only use structured programming. Ever. No
exceptions.") that fail to address the real problems (like 1000 line
functions and code organization that would tear the souls of everyone
with even the slightest background in software engineering asunder.)

> The rea‐
> son why st is keeping this global is because there is no intention to
> reuse the st object in your web page or on your iPad.
>

No-one wanted to do that. But keep up your straw-man burning over there!

> Enforcing such »structure« keeps you from going the fast lane in effi‐
> cient code.
>

Benchmarks or it didn't happen.

> The discussion on how terminals should evolve has happened on this mail‐
> inglist a while ago. No, it’s not reusing them everywhere and extending
> the escape codes.
>

That is already possible in a relatively painless way in st. So again,
you're burning a straw man here.

> Your narcissistic Apple user. Come down from your white horse.

Ascribing personality disorders to people is meaningless without a
certified psychology education. Also, slightly ironic you should say
that.

> You
> should contribute to st instead of forking it to an irrelevant platform
> like Mac OS X.
>

You don't need it, therefore it's irrelevant. Classy.

> Who’s still using Apple software in 2014 should be considered a fool.
> iPhones are open to everyone, Mac OS X is full of security holes, the
> hardware is built by slaves in the third world.

None of which is relevant to the task at hand.

> And if you try to use
> the job joker, learn about virtualisation. In the times of quad core
> CPUs and Gbit network you can run multiple instances of Linux every‐
> where.
>

Because when I think of running a terminal emulator, I think VMWare.
Especially when trying to change stuff in the host.

>
> Sincerely,
>
> Christoph Lohmann
>
>

Bye,
Markus
Received on Sun Aug 17 2014 - 12:35:18 CEST