Re: infobot mailing lists

[Jonathan H. <vha...@ru...>]

*sigh*

> Perl is a perfectl tool for the job.  There may be others equally
> suitable, but that is not an adequate reason for using them.

If there were others *more* suitable, however, that would be an adequate
reason for using them.  That's all I was saying.  I wasn't even
suggesting a language, I was suggesting that people think about it.

I'm sorry for treading on perl's toes, I shall not mention it again.  I
merely thought that infobot developers would be more keen on discussing
the best method for making a bot than sticking to the norms and
conventions laid down by infobot ages ago

> Somebody has already done a lot of re-implementation in perl.

Yes.  Me.

> Well yeah, I can see a real need for that.  I'm running a bot that's
> sitting on an IRC channel I use and rather than talk to the bot on the
> IRC channel I would much prefer to fire up a Java crapplet and talk to
> it directly.  Oh, I see what you're getting at.  I could run the bot
> without it talking to anyone but me via my desktop and I could teach it
> things and then later I could ask it about stuff I already know.

Setting your withering sarcasm aside, I would have thought that the
benefits of the ability to sit on an IRC channel *and* be accessible via
MSN Messenger, Jabber, AIM, or SMS (via a GSM modem) is patently
obvious.

An architecture that is not reliant on just one source is a good
architecture.  Abstraction from the nitty-gritty of protocol is a good
thing.  That's all I was saying.


> >Even the original infobot source has a method that allows two bots to
> >share their data.
> 
> IF you wanted it to.  In some situations that might be desirable, in
> others it most definitely is not.

That much is trivially obvious.  All behaviour should be configurable,
as a matter of course.

> OK, you've convinced me.  Let's rip out the IRC support and Yahoo
> support and create our own message service based on PB.

That is not what I said at all.  Right from the beginning, I have simply
been suggesting some ideas and technologies which were not in the
original infobot.  I'm suggesting extending the original design and
embracing new methods.  I'm also clearly pissing people off by
suggesting that infobot is not perfect.

> Then we persuade all the IRC users to switch just so they can talk to
> our wonderful bots.

Please.  There was absolutely no call to get so sarcastic and snide.  I
never suggested any of these.

> The only reason for needing another protocol so that bots can communicate
> is if they're on different servers.

That's the only bloody reason I suggested it in the first place.
Different bots on different servers can still communicate SHOULD THEY
WANT TO.


Look, forget it.  Go ahead.  I'll sit in the background until you start
developing.