Re: FWIW: script vs. configurtion file
On Wed, 23 Jul 2014 16:35:01 +0200
saint@eng.it wrote:
> Steve Litt writes:
>
> > Although I spent 14 years making my living as a software developer,
> > there are times when I don't want the freedom to do absolutely
> > anything. This is why I switched away from Perl: I needed some
> > limitations.
>
> Despite limits may be a fun challenge, I prefer to give a good
> configuration ready and let everyone free to do as she likes.
>
> That's the Debian way, and works quite well (even if not perfectly
> well).
So then, it sounds to me like you would want to write your program as
an API, document the API, and let the user write one or more
[Perl|Python|Ruby|Lua] programs to use the API to make the program
work their way. So then, for the program, you would use a different
design process. For instance, when I start to design a program, my first
question is "what data will be involved?" But to design the program as
an API, I would think the first question would be "What capabilities
do I want the user to have?"
You know, the beauty of doing it your way would be that various people
would write all sorts of [Perl|Python|Ruby|Lua] programs to make your
API do different things, so it would be sort of like you wrote 50
programs at one time. And of course, the knowledgeable user could
modify one of those [Perl|Python|Ruby|Lua] programs to make your
program perform in yet another unique way.
SteveT
Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance
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