| |||||||||||||
Semantic patching with CoccinelleSemantic patching with CoccinellePosted Jan 21, 2009 10:05 UTC (Wed) by wingo (guest, #26929)Parent article: Semantic patching with Coccinelle
Great article, Val, as always.
I also like turning tedium into tools problems -- it probably takes the same amount of time but writing tools is much more fun.
(Log in to post comments)
Semantic patching with Coccinelle Posted Jan 21, 2009 18:46 UTC (Wed) by ndk (subscriber, #43509) [Link]
... or as somebody (who?) said:
"I'd rather write programs that write programs, than write programs."
Semantic patching with Coccinelle Posted Jan 22, 2009 1:30 UTC (Thu) by sitaram (subscriber, #5959) [Link]
with absolutely no way to prove it, I think it was Larry Wall.
If it wasn't, it should be :-) Sounds like him...!
Semantic patching with Coccinelle Posted Jan 22, 2009 2:32 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] It appears that Richard Sites, who was a student of Donald Knuth, said it first (or at least before Larry Wall did), sometime in the 1970s.
Semantic patching with Coccinelle Posted Jan 22, 2009 5:46 UTC (Thu) by Mithrandir (subscriber, #3031) [Link]
Didn't someone say something like "the definition of a geek is someone who would rather write a tool to do a repetitive task than do the task itself, even if it takes longer to write the tool"? Might have been ESR.
Semantic patching with Coccinelle Posted Jan 22, 2009 8:35 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Douglas Adams spent several pages rhapsodizing about writing tools rather
than doing the actual job, even when the job was a one-off, in _Last Chance to See_. Given that this was a book about conservation this was a somewhat strange choice :)
Semantic patching with Coccinelle Posted Jan 23, 2009 0:47 UTC (Fri) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]
Ah, yes, but Douglas Adams was a world-class procrastinator, and what else is writing a tool but the most productive form of procrastination? As for conservation... well, I suppose you could draw a long and tortured analogy about how conservation is a bit like that kind of job, and the temptation is to get all of the conditions exactly right for a creature's continued survival, and how even if it dies off in the meantime, before its habitat is properly ready, you still get that sense of achievement from having done a little something to save the world anyway... or something...
|
|||||||||||||