[mercury-users] mea-culpa

[Robert Shiplett]

"Everyone farmiliar with building software from source already knows about
./configure --help
"

You are simply mistaken on this obvious point. Such simple ignorance
often appears to surprise judges, dentists, professors, civil
engineers ... where "everyone" is concerned but some one simpleton is
the case in point.

Structural engineers often comment on the astonishing lacunae in the
'knowledge' of architects.  I cite the leaking CS building housing AI
at MIT next to the concrete hulk housing philosophy (for which I
assume no architect would wish to take credit.)  My own 3-storey twin
leaking buildings of many years were the work of the World Trade
Center architect whom everyone thought knew what everyone knew about
winter in Saskatchewan when building anything on 'gumbo' clay.  I
believe that only the fountains were never restored (prohibitive
cost.)  The 'attached' elegant library has a missing mezzanine floor
due to an over-sight (the weight of the books.)

I only muse: if MissionCriticalIT were to cease mention of Mercury,
would the adoption of Mercury be affected?  It is a hypothetical which
only might interest someone such as myself with an interest in the
'sociology of CS', if you will - itself a tale of buzzwords, hyperbole
and ignorance as much as effective, rational application of science to
problems.  I would have said 'Oz', but I only knew of one project and
no web-site or identifiable group. In the case of the Rebol language,
there is qtask.com (sadly plagued by a scandal as to the source of
their venture cap.)  I am told an anecdote repeatedly about one site
and the 'resulting' wide-spread interest in Ruby.

A 'steep learning curve' or a very different 'mind-set' might be
proposed as barriers to adoption of a programming language.  I am not
yet convinced that history and sociology bear this out.  Perhaps
because I overlook the obvious ...

best regards
R


On 13 October 2010 19:04, Paul Bone <pbone at csse.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 11:22:06AM -0300, Robert Shiplett wrote:
>> I am wrong.
>>
>> A refresh of Win Explore on XP shows that non-prof grades did install first
>>
>> So the INSTALL file destined for a first-time user with no access to
>> binaries might better say
>>
>> First run
>>
>>   ./configure -h
>> or
>>   ./configure --help
>>
>
> Everyone farmiliar with building software from source already knows about
> ./configure --help
>
>> Consider a first install with
>>  ./configure --disable-most-grades
>> [ follow by other practical suggestions if have less than 2Gb free or
>> slow drive or remote drive or need for use of single core during build
>>
>> Or some such.
>>
>> An alternative is to have a
>>   README-first-time-user.txt
>
> We have an FAQ section about installation here:
>
> http://www.mercury.csse.unimelb.edu.au/information/doc-latest/mercury_faq/Installing.html#Installing
>
> Please help us by contributing to it.
>
> Regarding --disable-most-grades, it's best to work out which grades you might
> actually use and install only those.  It's just much quicker.
>
>
>> A language which few use is likely to be a language which few
>> appreciate or acknowledge - but I grant that both Prologia (and for a
>> time, also PDC.dk ) ceased to even mention Prolog on their home pages;
>>  when I last looked, the new masters of Prologia had no mention of CLP
>> or Prolog IV.  Then came the Prolog to any XML document. Oh vey.  A
>> Chaucerian prologue, anyone?
>>
>> Said as one who works in the Curl lang (www.curl.com) in the world of
>> cURL (the boys from MIT failed to defend their own spin-off trademark
>> - go figger.)
>
> What are you talking about?  What does Prolog have to do with installing
> Mercury?
>
>
>
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