I love it when people explain things or make a point using a relevant story (or parable) :)
It reminds me of when Michael Abrash would start his articles with the same. Ah, the memories... Cheers Doug. On 11 Nov 2012 17:00, "Doug McIlroy" <[email protected]> wrote: > This note is an offshoot of "curl package broken in Windows", > where this item appeared: > > > Did you know that Strawberry Perl includes a cygwin gcc? > > ... > > Maybe Haskell Platform could do the same. > > The suggestion brought to mind a true-life parable: the pump > station at Tok. (Tok is the third corner--after Anchorage > and Fairbanks--of Alaska's triangular core of long-distance > highways.) When I visited Tok long ago, it was a village of > several hundred souls, almost all of whom were employed by one > government agency or another, principal among which were the > highway department, the Alaska Communication Service and the > pump station, which kept fuel flowing to Eielson Air Force Base. > > The mission of the station was to keep one pump running 24 hours > a day. Most of the time, of course, the pump hummed along by > itself. To assure that, there had to be a standby machine, > an operator to watch over both, and a mechanic who could fix > them if need be. For such a lonely job it was deemed well to > have two operators. And there had to be two operators for each > of several shifts. A little redundancy on the mechanical side > seemed wise, too. The crew and their families, say nothing of > the pumps themselves, needed to be housed, and the installation > needed to be supplied with the necessities of life. (The nearest > supermarket was in Fairbanks, 300 miles away.) These needs > demanded a motor pool and property maintenance cadre, whose > very presence reinforced the need. > > Thus the support team to keep one pump going ballooned to about > 100 people--a chain reaction that barely avoided criticality. > > So it seems to be with Haskell Platform, which aims to include > "all you need to get up and running"--"an extensive set of > standard libraries and utilities with full documentation." I > get the impression that the Platform is bedeviled by the > same prospect of almost unfettered growth. > > [One ominous sign: the description of the Haskell Platform > at lambda.haskell.org/platform/doc/current/start.html suggests > that one must join some mysterious Cabal, whose nature is > hidden by a link to nowhere, simply to get started.] > > What principles guide the selection of components for "all > you need to get up and running"? > > Doug McIlroy > > _______________________________________________ > Haskell-Cafe mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe >
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