[TxMt] Is the TextMate community faulty?

Jeremy Bernstein listorama at expr-i0.net
Mon Jul 23 12:41:02 UTC 2007


Despite the obvious irresponsibility of Thomas's post (why in the  
world would you send something like that into a community of people  
not guaranteed to be CLI savvy? Even as a joke, it's totally  
unfathomable.), I think the TM list is one of the most on-point lists  
I've ever belonged to.

There are lots of ways to ask "why would you want to do that?", and  
many of them are justified. Typically, the real question is "what's  
your goal here?", and reasonable people can reasonably dispute about  
whether a particular tool can or should be used to reach a particular  
goal.

TM might be reaching its terrible twos though, where there are enough  
people who have been using it for long enough, that there could be a  
division of the community into newbies and old-timers. It's up to the  
old-timers to keep the in-jokes to a minimum and welcome mat before  
the door.

jb

Am 23.07.2007 um 14:27 schrieb Andy Armstrong:

> A couple of recent posts asking perfectly reasonable questions  
> about TextMate (can you open documents R/O, can you split the  
> screen) have attracted answers in the spirit of "why would you want  
> to do that?" or "here's a command that will erase your hard drive  
> luser". The latter a particularly stupid and frankly unexpected  
> contribution from Thomas.
>
> I know TM has a lot of fans in the Ruby community. I wonder if  
> we're seeing the same attitude that hangs around Ruby like a bad  
> smell ("you can't write a DSL in any language apart from Ruby",  
> "wow! That's just not possible in other languages") applied to  
> TextMate.
>
> Assuming there's at least some overlap between the two groups of  
> fanatics I'll attempt to address both at the same time: please wait  
> until you've had experience of other languages / editors before you  
> start condemning everthing not-Ruby or not-Textmate.
>
> Ruby and TextMate are both excellent tools; both have limitations  
> and misfeatures as all non trivial software does. Neither will  
> continue to improve if their fans believe them already perfect.
>
>   "And what should they know of England who only England know?"
>                                          Rudyard Kipling, The  
> English Flag



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