FW: fPSA

[Fairlight]

The honourable and venerable John Esak spoke thus:
> Just so. In fact, this is exactly what you were saying to _me_ in your first
> point, but see it from my perspective. You just mention that you already
> knew several languages, C, Pascal, etc., and several shells... *then* you
> picked up PERL and flew with it quickly in a month or so... even a week I
> think you said. Well, seriously, do you think a neophyte who knows nothing
> about any programming could pick up PERL in a week or a month even... nah, I
> don't think so. There are way too many other disciplines that need to be
> under your belt first. Not to mention plain system/file O/S knowledge.
> Again, I think with equal starting points... no programming whatever and a
> week to learn it... filePro would have you writing apps quicker than PERL
> and MySQL... by far.  (Especially if you took the FSS Tutorials... okay,

I'd have to agree.  Given an equal playing ground, filePro is less complex,
an therefore takes less time with which to get up and running.  It does
this, of course, at the sacrifice of some things that I Just Can't Do
Without, personally...or at least don't like to.  But your point stands as
an object of raw, empirical observation.

I would mention, however, that people that don't actually learn much about
the underlying OS (especially in *nix), but concentrate only on learning
filePro pretty much to exclusion...tend to be some of the biggest menaces
to systems. :) I'm serious.  I wish I had a dime for every time I've seen
someone toss 777 at filePro files because they "can't make it work any
other way--filePro needs it that way!"  Rubbish.  It may have loose default
modes on exports, but it doesn't need the barn door all the way open.

> One up for PERL, one down for filePro, I have to admit this. However, I had
> to comment on this paragraph of yours so that I could mention that this is
> the second time within a week that I've seen you misspell practice. :-)  Not
> like you. :-)

Actually, it's exactly like me, and it's not misspelled, technically
speaking.  :)  I'll use Brit spellings whenever I know them, and that is the
Brit alternate spelling for the word.  I use it all the time.  I still
haven't found a "gold standard" rule for the substituting of S for Zed, or
C for S.  I've seen defence, as in Ministry of Defence.  That's also a Brit
thing.  There are exceptions to both substitutions though, so if I can't
verify the legitimacy of a translation, I'll use the American version out
of caution.

Practise with an S is even listed in Merriam Webster--it brings up a page
with both variants.

> I like your whole body/engine thing... but these days, I try avoiding talk
> of bodies as much as possible. :-) I just need another two weeks on my
> diet... or two months... :-)

Man, I'm just starting mine.  Cutting down on the Krispy Kreme is...not the
easiest thing in the world.  Doing it though...went to the doc for a med
check and saw my weight.  I was unhappy.  So...cutting down and only
splurging on weekends and bad days.  It's -amazing- how many bad days one
can have.  *dry cough*  :)

I really wanna drop about 40lbs.  Gonna take a while.  Said I was scaling
back, not shooting for martyrdom.  :)

mark->
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