Re: From the LuxAsm list.

From: T.M. Sommers (tms_at_nj.net)
Date: 08/06/04 

Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 22:55:43 -0400

Beth wrote:
> T.M. Sommers wrote:
>
>>You are not so much unifying as reinventing many wheels.
>
> Well, actually, kind of both at the same time...reinventing unified wheels
> ;)
>
>>make and cvs and the like already exist;
>
> I noticed, having used them...
>
>>why not use them instead of creating your own clones, which are
>>bound to be less useful?
>
> Because they may be wheels but they are not unified wheels...

Then build a unifying layer on top of them.

> because, for
> better or ill, the purpose of LuxAsm is "specific assembler", so the
> toolset is not actually about what you typically find under UNIX...yes,
> "specific" may be contrary to *NIX but this is part of the design of
> LuxAsm...

It sounds as though 'specific' means 'deliberately incompatible
with everything else', whereas I thought it meant, in this
context, 'tailored to the particular platform in use'.

> Simple; If no-one had ever re-invented the wheel in the course of human
> history, then we wouldn't have had:
>
> Chariots, cars, fans, turbines, cogs, clocks, steam power, electrical

Well, some of those things you mention we could happily do
without, such as Warhol.

However, 're-invent the wheel' does not mean 'improve the wheel'.
  It does not mean to build a better mousetrap, but to build the
same old mousetrap, probably taking twice as long, costing twice
as much, and working half as well as the old one.

The LuxAsm team has limited resources (every team has limited
resources). You have to allocate those limited resources to the
various jobs that have to be done before the program is finished.
  Every programmer-hour that is spent reinventing make or cvs or
whatever is a programmer-hour that cannot be spent working on the
assembler or some other part of the project.

If it were my project (and obviously it is not), I would not even
create an IDE, but would create a LuxAsm mode for emacs. I do
not want to waste time and effort building an editor when one
already exists much better than anything I could build, or
building a make tool, or a versioning system.

You actually missed the main point of the Unix philosophy, which
is that each program should do one thing, and do it well.
Integrated tools generally do many things, and do them, at best,
adequately. 

-- 
Thomas M. Sommers -- tms@nj.net -- AB2SB

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