GitHub: Scaling on Ruby, with a nomadic tech team • Hacker News Board

Re: GitHub: Scaling on Ruby, with a nomadic tech team

#41

Post by nilved » Fri, Aug 28, 2015, 12:51 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #30

mbrock wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting why shell scripts are seen as so "fragile" or "flimsy." Why would bash be any more inherently flimsy than any other interpreted language? Why would the global mass of Ruby, JavaScript, Perl, Python, Java, C++, whatever be any less fragile? The whole world is held together by duct tape. At least most shell scripts keep it simple.

Shell scripts are normally based on scraping the output of other commands via regexs. Properly made Python or Ruby scripts are not.

If a "properly made" Python or Ruby script uses more advanced parsers, what prevents you from "properly making" a shell script?

Re: GitHub: Scaling on Ruby, with a nomadic tech team

#42

Post by michaelbuckbee » Fri, Aug 28, 2015, 1:54 PM UTC

shiny wrote: post #13

> A month ago I was working from a cabin in the woods in Wisconsin. OT, but has anyone else tried this? I've often fantasized about working while embedded in a beautiful nature setting, but I imagine it's tough to find good internet in such a place. I'm in California ... any recommendations? I've also thought of copying Antony Garret Lisi's 'science hostel' idea [1] but for coders / entrepreneurs :) [1]: https://en.w…

California seems to have some of the worst Internet and cell service (at least the SV area). I worked a week last month from the Outer Banks in NC with no problems.

Re: GitHub: Scaling on Ruby, with a nomadic tech team

#43

Post by nailer » Fri, Aug 28, 2015, 2:13 PM UTC

nilved wrote: post #41

nailer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shell scripts are normally based on scraping the output of other commands via regexs. Properly made Python or Ruby scripts are not.

If a "properly made" Python or Ruby script uses more advanced parsers, what prevents you from "properly making" a shell script?

A few things:

- Most people who write shell scripts really don't want to write a 'ps' or 'ip' (or for non-Linux, 'ifconfig') replacement. On the other hand, Python and Ruby have libraries that talk to /proc and the network ioctls directly.

- most shell script authors don't even use bash arrays, and higher level data types don't exist. It's hard to represent a C struct in shell. C libraries are therefore exposed to shell scripts by scraping their stdout.