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"A good programmer uses the most powerful tool to do a job. A great programmer uses the least powerful tool that does the job." I believe this, and I always try

• dunefox 5y ago
  Ehh. Until the 'job' gets extended and then your simple tool makes it exponentially more complex and you have to rewrite it with the more powerful tool.
  • inanutshellus 5y ago
    Choosing a "good enough for the medium term with minimal effort now" is a winner in my book, even if it's likely to be rewritten in the long term.
    • selfhoster11 5y ago
      Exactly. I end up re-implementing my scripts if they outgrow the original scripting language anyway, because it's a good time to add proper argument and error handling, logging, etc.
  • Folcon 5y ago
    Surely that isn't a weakness of a simple tool? A 5 min job that probably won't get extended saving you from having to spend 20 mins coding something up is better than, feeling annoyed that you have spent the 20 mins coding up the original implementation and then extend it. Hopefully, you also get the benefit of additional knowledge on that future implementation as well. Why wouldn't this just be a net win? Unless you're talking about writing hack after hack after hack, eventually leaving yourself with some incomprehensible eldritch monstrosity, in which case, don't do that?
  • klyrs 5y ago
    The nice thing about a 1-liner is you only lose a few minutes to throwing it out entirely and rewriting it to fit a new purpose. Dwelling on what might be needed is of limited utility, because of the very real possibility that what's actually needed in the future is wildly different from what you spent all that time planning for.
  • selfhoster11 5y ago
    This is fine. I often "prototype" my automations as shell scripts, to explore what I actually want the tool to handle. Once it gets longer than 20 or so lines, it's time to move to a better language, but I don't mind rewriting. This is a chance to add error handling, config, proper arguments, built-in help texts and whatever else.
    • teknopaul 5y ago
      I started to add error handling to my shell scripts and often never rewrite them. Defo agree with the sentiment that you should always be happy (and able) to rewrite a shell scripts, dont let its scope creep. I don't mind long(ish) shell scripts as long as the program flow is fairly linear. Too many function calls is the smell that makes me rewrite.
• rakoo 5y ago
  If I understand this correctly, it will gzip every line separately instead of gzipping them together... it's not really the most effective but it does work
  • aidenn0 5y ago
    It does not. The pipe command leaves the pipe open and successive pipes with identical strings remain open until the pipe is explicitly closed. [edit] Here's the link to the gawk documentation, but most flavors of AWK work similarly: https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html#Close-Files-And-Pipes https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html#Close-Fil...
    • rakoo 5y ago
      Wow, this is amazing. It really shows how complexity should be managed in the tool so that the user can do the naive thing and have it be accidentally optimal
      • aidenn0 5y ago
        It is surprising to people who expect them to behave like shell pipelines and redirections though. I somehow never got bit by it, but have definitely corrected other's awk scripts who didn't know about this feature.
• zdwolfe 5y ago
  I really love that quote "..A good programmer...", do you have a source?
  • vyuh 5y ago
    I believe the source is https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/12/16/good-mathematician-vs-great-mathematician/ https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/12/16/good-mathematicia...