>>So, is it a proper use of the word ironic if autoconf, designed to make
>>code location-independent, is itself failing because autoconf itself has
>>become very version-sensitive? Inquiring non-english-majors want to know!
it might be `ironic' if `autoconf' had ever met its notional specification.
`autoconf' is not even an `oxymoron', just a `moron'. actually, i suppose
`idiot savant' might
be most accurate: it's really a collection of all the recipes they've met so
far, but give
it something new or a revision of something old, and it is completely lost.
it has far too many peculiar details built in to it.
admittedly, it's not helped by programmers who, for instance, conditionally
use either gettimeofday or time when they only want time to the second,
thus requiring a configuration choice between them.
perhaps `moron' was right, too:
1
Mo"ron (?), n. (Pedagogy) A person whose intellectual development
proceeds normally up to about the eighth year of age and is then
arrested so that there is little or no further development.
