[Radiance-general] RADIANCE and Unix shells

[Jack de Valpine]

Hey Rob,

I follow-up on that. I probably could have used a more robust cup of jo 
this morning as I repeated the word in every darn sentence. Ack!

In general, I think that if you learn one of these things then entry 
into the next becomes easier. I started out with csh, sed and awk, ages 
ago, and while it worked it is ugly, I had to learn how to use three 
different tools (heck, I think that you can by an O'Reilly book for each 
of these). Nevertheless, shell scripting is definitely the most quick 
and dirty way to get things done.

Rob is correct. A hugely confusing element to Perl (for which you can 
buy a lot more than 3 O'Reilly books) is the fact that there are lots 
and lots of way to do things, this can be both a pro and a con. Though I 
think in general looking at other peoples code is always painful unless 
it is extremely well documented. I cannot really speak for Python, 
though I think it is probably a bit "cleaner" than Perl.

I think the crux of it all though is having an actual problem that you 
are trying to solve and access to some good books with examples. This is 
the best way to learn that I have found.

-Jack

Rob Guglielmetti wrote:

> Jack de Valpine wrote:
>
>> Hi Kirk,
>>
>> Depending on what you are trying to do you may want to consider 
>> something more robust in terms of programming features such as Perl 
>> or Python. I am a huge fan of Perl which is extremely robust. On the 
>> other hand I know that Georg Mischler is quite a proponent of Python 
>> which is also quite robust.
>
>
> Starbucks coffee is also known for their robustness, but then again 
> that doesn't really help you with programming.  =8-)
> Ahem.
> Kirk, Jack is steering you in the right direction, but I'd also like 
> to cast a vote for good old fashioned shell scripting, using either 
> bash or tsh.  Some of the radiance commands are actually shell 
> scripts, usually written in tsh, which may be a case for learning 
> tsh.  I learned shell scripting by dissecting some of the stuff Greg 
> Ward and John Mardaljevic wrote, which served me well for many years.  
> Bash has more features than tsh, but then again like Jack said 
> languages like Python and Perl have many more than Bash.  It comes 
> down to what you're trying to do, and how much you expect to borrow 
> from other sources too.
> Also, regarding Perl: Jack's a Perl fan because he knows it well.  But 
> I'd caution that Perl can be a bear when working with Other People's 
> Code, because it is so "loose".  There is a saying among Perl People 
> that goes "There's more than one way to do it", which can be an 
> obstacle when trying to read someone else's programs (which is how I 
> learned programming in the first place).  I grow fonder of Python all 
> the time.
>
> Whatever way you go, have fun!  Scripting is the key to unlocking the 
> power of Radiance.
>
> - Rob Guglielmetti
>
>
>
>
>
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