[TxMt] Is the TextMate community faulty?

[Jenny Harrison]

 > > I think the TextMate community is pretty wonderful by the standards of
> > technical communities in general, and that Allan sets an excellent
> > example by his attitude here. I agree that an unwelcome element of
> > defensiveness is creeping into some of the recent threads, but the
> > helpful replies still outnumber the unhelpful ones by some margin.
> >
> > I assume that Thomas's dangerous "joke" was merely astonishingly
> > ill-judged, rather than actually malicious.
> >
> > Robin
>
> Yes.
> I am merely stupid, not evil.
> I'm going to see what I can do about fixing that.
> --      thomas

I would like to try and bring some closure to this unfortunate
incident.   Yesterday was one of deep grieving for the loss, but all
should be well quite soon.  My son is more savvy than I about these
things and is hard at work to restore my TextMate files, which are all
I really need.  (Thomas also kindly offered to help.)   The TM
community has meant a lot to me over this last year.  I have found
everyone to be wonderfully helpful, including Thomas who has helped me
in several personal exchanges to set up nice improvements. Haris got
me started last summer and sent many detailed messages. I met a few of
you at the Mac Show in SF and had some great conversations.  I have
fine-tuned my computer, expanded the power of TextMate, learned of
other related software such as QuickSilver, and stayed on the cutting
edge with everyone's help.   In turn, I have converted my students at
UC Berkeley to TextMate and tried to duplicate what I have learned for
them.

Throughout this, I was like a blind person when it came to Unix.  It
did not seem I needed to learn this as others in the group were
willing to show me code I could simply copy and paste.  Before
yesterday wonderful things insued!  It was beyond my wildest
imagination that less than ten letters could wipe out my entire drive
in a matter of minutes.   (It reminds me of the amazingly short code
we used to create Julia sets.)   I thought I was taking a little hop
with my eyes closed, not jumping off a cliff!  This was a freak
accident and no one should be blamed.

Be well everyone,

Jenny