Re: infobot mailing lists

[Paul L. A. <pl...@so...>]

Jonathan Hitchcock writes: 

> I was heading towards Python with my question ;-)

Ummm, platform independence?  Can you get Python for windows? 

> Again, Perspective Broker has all the advantages and none of the
> disadvantages.  I just think it might be useful for different bots to
> communicate with each other and share modules.  But that's waaaay in the
> future.

Again, it seems silly to bring another communications protocol into play
if you want to do this, since the whole purpose of the bots is to be
on IRC.  You already have a communications layer there.  Not that I would
ever want a bot I run getting orders from a bot somebody else runs.  But
if I did it would make more sense to layer something on top of what is
already there. 

I'm surprised you didn't mention Corba and XML.  Everybody who wants to
design bloatware drags those two monsters into things.  "What can I do
to make this slow, inefficient and make the messages far less
comprehensible and much harder to debug?  I know!  Corba and XML!  If
I fiddle with the DTD enough I can make it so you need 1MB of XML garbage
just to send a smiley." 

Sorry if I sound cynical, but I've seen the results of misapplying stuff
like that.  Whatever happened to simplicity and elegance in design?  What
happend to the Unix programming philosophy of keeping tools and
protocols small and simple?  Why do people insist on introducing
unnecessary complications? 

-- 
Paul Allen
Softflare Support