A lot of what Rob said resonates with me as well. I just wanted to add that perspective is probably important too.
"Why install J in Program files"? - because it is a program just like a whole lot of other ones that I use. Why should it be special/different? (I admit that it is becoming more special to me as time goes on!) I can see that taken in isolation a standard install of J makes a lot of sense. However if J is just one program of many that I use, then it becomes an exception and exceptions require additional overhead. Taken to the extreme, if all programs wanted to be different then, as Rob suggests, there would be no expected structure and finding stuff, manually or programmatically, would be much more difficult. Structured data is much easier to work with than un-structured data! ---Rob Hodgkinson wrote: > On 13/03/08 8:53 AM, "Eric Iverson" wrote: > > ... > > Again, I wonder why people install J in "program files". How do the > > advantages weigh against the disadvantages? > > > Some reasons I prefer to install in Program Files: > (1) I like to have only one place to look to see what programs (equipment > supplier, 3rd party, user defined etc) are installed on my machine > (2) It has become a de facto standard to install programs > in one place under > Program Files. An artifact of DOS/Earlier Windows was that program > directories just Œappeared¹ everywhere beneath C:\ which > made things a little > messy/less structured to work with. > (3) Further, it encourages user data to be separated from > program data, > simplifying backups (faster, lightweight etc). Programs > aren¹t much help for > recovery (unless within a disk image) so can waste backup > time, and then you > need only point to the Œtop level¹ data/user folder to > identify the backup > source. Also having Œjust data¹ in one well identified > area/folder simplifies > searches for files/text etc (typically seeking something of mine). > (4) With data separated (and only the programs in Program > Files) then you > don¹t risk inadvertently losing your data should an upgrade > destroy/overwrite > the previous version (This is more of a data separation > advantage than > anything to do with Program Files, but Œprogram > collections¹ do encourage > storing data elsewhere than in Program Files). > > I just found the system easier to manage over time (I > worked in Sys/NW Admin > for a large company for 8 years too, so it really did help). Disk > organisation is something that seems like the suppliers > leave to each user, so > any reasonable/logical structure has advantages. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
