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Was it too difficult to ask his friend to do right click -> create text document-> open it and write 'ren STAR.cha STAR.txt' -> save it as rename.bat and double click on it? Seriously, I'm not sure if this whole thing is a joke... edit: not sure why I cannot write the jolly character here
It's so subtle that even the author might have missed it.
This reads less as “Python style scripting in Rust” and more as “I like Rust, also it’s cross-platform.” Not that this is a bad thing, but it feels like a bit of a far cry from my hacked together workflow of throw code in iPython and write out when I’m happy. I don’t see anything here that makes Rust any more attractive than whatever your multiplatform language of choice is for this use case scenario. That being said…
I actually do think that Rust's type system helps a bit, because it forces me to consider weird portability issues (such as the way Windows permits slightly invalid Unicode, which Rust represents as OSString instead of String).
And of course, cross-compilation with MinGW is a real help. Sadly, OpenSSL still poses a fair number of portability issues, since it's notoriously difficult to link statically.
Doesn't Windows have a built-in JavaScript runtime, the Windows Script Host? Sure, it may not be a very pretty language either, but it's still relatively sane compared to batch scripts. (I can't speak of PowerShell.)
I do like activex/js and wsh, but Wsh might require permissions to modify the filesystem, so installation/setup step can be harder than just copying and running a statically compiled executable.
First of all, why doesn't this have a UI? It would be much easier for the friend to select the folder with the .cha files and they could see a nice progress bar while they are renamed.
However, if there are few files the renaming process would be too fast and the progress bar would flicker. An easy solution is to add sleep calls in the worker thread to ensure that the progress is visible.
Of course the user could have lots of .cha files, and the friend might get bored. A popular pattern is to display an overview of the program features in picture + text format while a long procedure is running. There could be one about .cha file renaming for instance.
It might make sense to also show ads, depending on the monetization strategy. Maybe the friend wants to buy something and they don't realise it yet.
Finally, when the whole thing is done, the friend should be offered the option to post it on twitter and/or facebook. Something along the lines "I have just renamed 100 .cha files using rename-it. Try it yourself at ". The address needs to be different from the blog, probably an SPA, but I'm not an expert at that. And one more tip: don't ask for the facebook login before the renaming, this makes users suspicious. It's much better to ask before posting and explain why you need it. This builds trust.
I said that Rust is not the right tool. I would maybe try Electron, it's also cross-platform, but the code can be reused on the back-end. For instance one can upload a zip of all their .cha files and they get a zip of txt files back.
Ultimately desktop apps such as these are a thing of the past. But I guess it's a nice exercise.
Was it too difficult to ask his friend to do right click -> create text document-> open it and write 'ren STAR.cha STAR.txt' -> save it as rename.bat and double click on it? Seriously, I'm not sure if this whole thing is a joke... edit: not sure why I cannot write the jolly character here
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm wondering what part of the twelve step compilation process was found to be easier than simply installing Python on the target machine? That part is something that you can control. Giving instructions for someone non-technical to install Python and run a script with it, and then helping them figure out how to interpret those instructions, is a heck of a lot more complicated. And yeah, you can diddle around with…
> Giving instructions for someone non-technical to install Python and run a script with it, and then helping them figure out how to interpret those instructions, is a heck of a lot more complicated. Training someone to accept binary file and run it without question is just dangerous.
Accepting random binaries from the net and running them is the main software distribution model.
The amount of contortions the author has had to go through is ridiculous, and all because the target operating system is Windows, and doesn't yet ship a production ripe UNIX userland (hence no AWK, sed, or zsh/tcsh/ksh out of the box). As a colleague of mine always says: give Wintendo no chance!
Despite that, Windows is still the most popular desktop OS in the world by an enormous margin. You don't help a friend who needs to rename a load of files by saying "well, it'd be much easier if you first installed Linux". Or cygwin, or even the Windows Subsystem for Linux if they're running Windows 10 Anniversary Update.
I love this idea. There's an implicit assumption that the reason scripting languages are suitable for scripts is that they play fast and loose with type systems, which allow enough shortcuts and escape hatches to be productive. But that's only part of the story. Along with typing, scripting languages also had the major advantage of being fast to bootstrap and run (`ruby script.rb`) and were fully "batteries included"…
>[...] the standard library is about as complete as you can get (and probably better than the classical scripting languages — all of Ruby/Python/Perl missed a good API for some things like HTTP, which led to the rise of separate packages like Faraday/Requests/etc) What? Rust basically has no standard library. At least Python doesn't require pulling in third-party libraries to do globbing, create a zip/tar, create a t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Despite that, Windows is still the most popular desktop OS in the world by an enormous margin. You don't help a friend who needs to rename a load of files by saying "well, it'd be much easier if you first installed Linux". Or cygwin, or even the Windows Subsystem for Linux if they're running Windows 10 Anniversary Update.
You help a friend by giving him a one liner COMMAND.COM shell script, instead of turning it into a cross-compiling hackfest just because you're a Rust fanboy (in author's own words).