How do I tell when I'm on Cygwin?

Ruby
61

On 10/26/06, [email protected] [email protected]
wrote:

David, David, David …

The Forbidden Fruit - Penny Arcade

You know it could be like this. Just like this. Always.

LOL

You know this did start as a discussion about benchmarks.

Let’s just agree to honor each others choice of software we use and
recognize we all probably know what we’re doing :slight_smile:

One thing we all agree on is that Ruby is a wonderful language, whatever
platform its on!

–
Robert W. Oliver II
President, OCS Solutions, Inc. - Web Hosting and Development

Toll-Free Phone - 1-800-672-8415

OCS Ruby Forums - http://www.rubyforums.com/
My Blog - http://www.rwoliver.com/

62

On Fri, 27 Oct 2006, Austin Z. wrote:

On 10/26/06, Robert D. [email protected] wrote:

These are all very nice and honerable tools but I go with the folks who,
like me, feel that is too much pain to learn too many tools, I love bash, I
need to learn zsh for professional reasons, and I have sooo many other
interesting stuff I cannot even read about.

I simply do not understand that. I cannot understand that. It

I believe you are mistaken in this assertion: I think you can
understand, that even within the set of programmers, people have
different learning styles. They have different priorities that
result from that.

essentially boils down to “I don’t want to know anything about this
platform that I must use.” I am equally comfortable in Unix and

That’s not my case. I’d like to be more fluent in Windows but there
are so many irritations that it isn’t worth the pain, for me.
Concrete examples? Well, you talk about impedance mismatches.
Almost all other OSs I have used use / as the dierctory separator.
Windows uses . That’s at a more fundamental level of programming
habit than knowing that C: becomes /cygdrive/c under cygwin.

All modern programming languages that distinguish between double
quoted strings and single quoted strings use the doubles for
expansion of variables. Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl… What does Windows
do? The opposite. This means whenever I use windows commands from
CMD they fail the first time. Yes, I will grant you that the
command set in CMD is better than in Windows3.

WindowsXP doesn’t even provide an ANSI colo(u)r command window. How
rubbish is that? Syntax highlighting (etc) is the norm now, but I
can’t use tools like glark effectively on windows without something
like cygwin. This is clearly a step backwards from DOS!

    [...]

But maybe the real discussion is about Windows, I use Cygwin to forget
that Window even exists it is a therapy for me.

That’s the problem, then. If you want to forget Windows even exists
when you’re using Windows, why the HELL are you using Windows in the

In my case, I work in an environment where Management expects people
to use it, and they communicate with us using Word documents, Excel
spreadsheets, etc. Do I have any hope of convincing them that these
are not open standards, so we are tied to the whims of one company,
so we should avoid that? Staff get machines with windows on. Is it
really worth the grief of using something else and getting it to
inter-operate with these tools? And besides, there is a lot of
software that only works for Windows, and quite a lot of that works
sufficiently well to make it a usable system for work. So, I spend
most of my time in a PuTTY window, using a Solaris system.

first place? If your workplace requires that you use Windows, then
install coLinux and be done with it. Otherwise, install Linux or

I’ll look into coLinux at some point. Thanks.

FreeBSD or something else on your machine and stop pretending you’re
using Unix.

If you can’t stand working in the Windows cmd.exe, spend the money to
get TotalCommander or Directory Opus. I personally prefer TC on

What money? Don’t get me started on budgeting… That’s another
reason for using Cygwin, we don’t have to get someone to agree to
the budgeting for it.

Your quote (“The reasonable man adapts himself…”) is somewhat apt.
However, you’re not going to change Windows by being unreasonable on
Windows (e.g., expecting Unix behaviour to mesh well); others won’t

Cygwin does it sufficiently well to be very useful. Is it perfect?
Well, is anything? Of course not. E.g: keyboard shortcuts for cut
and paste? No.

change Linux by being unreasonable on Linux (e.g., running WINE).
Better to deal with things as they are if you must deal with an
operating system you do not prefer.

Isn’t that what cygwin does for people? It lets them deal with things
as they are. I don’t use cygwin for writing code for Windows, apart
from Ruby apps. And Ruby, like Perl, has sufficient Unix heritage to
make that more pleasant in cygwin, from my point of view.

So, does all the above make your choice NOT to use it wrong? No.
You use what works best for you. That won’t be the same choice for
everyone else, though.

-austin

    Hugh
63

On Oct 26, 6:44 pm, “Austin Z.” [email protected] wrote:

I am equally comfortable in Unix and
Windows – and the longtime Mac folks who were at RubyConf this past
weekend can tell you how quickly I’ve adapted to the Mac in just two
months (with some things that I have yet to find a comfortable
replacement for).

Would you like a candy? A pat on the back? A “who cares - just because
you
want to increase the amount of work you have to do by making your
platforms
completely disparate, doesn’t mean I have to?”

[snip]

But maybe the real discussion is about Windows, I use Cygwin to forget
that Window even exists it is a therapy for me.

That’s the problem, then. If you want to forget Windows even exists
when you’re using Windows, why the HELL are you using Windows in the
first place? If your workplace requires that you use Windows, then
install coLinux and be done with it.

Yeah, because coLinux is a great, flawless alternative. Seriously: what
would
someone gain by installing coLinux over Cygwin, if that person wishes
to
develop for Windows? You get some speed, but Cygwin’s speed is more
than
sufficient for many tasks.

[snip]

If you can’t stand working in the Windows cmd.exe, spend the money to
get TotalCommander or Directory Opus. I personally prefer TC on
Windows, but others swear by DOpus. I am basically at the command-line
to run specific scripts which don’t pause when finished. I rarely
navigate directories by the command-line (I will usually navigate with
TC and then run cmd.exe if I need a command window).

I have yet to meet the graphical file manager that allows me to work
anywhere
near as quickly and efficiently as I do in bash with Unix utilities.
What
would I gain by shelling out cash for a program which slows me down,
other
than some warm and happy feeling about using completely native
solutions?

Better to deal with things as they are if you must deal with an
operating system you do not prefer.

Why? What exactly do you gain?

Best,
James

64

On 10/27/06, Hugh S. [email protected] wrote:

Isn’t that what cygwin does for people? It lets them deal with things
as they are. I don’t use cygwin for writing code for Windows, apart
from Ruby apps. And Ruby, like Perl, has sufficient Unix heritage to
make that more pleasant in cygwin, from my point of view.

At the risk of jumping in here again, I will :slight_smile:

I agree completely with this. Ruby just feels more at home in a UNIX
environment, and Cygwin is a great way to provide this on Windows.

Cygwin’s copy and paste issues are no different than VMWare’s btw :slight_smile:

So, does all the above make your choice NOT to use it wrong? No.

You use what works best for you. That won’t be the same choice for
everyone else, though.

Absolutely.

It’s the same debate of Mac vs PC, Windows vs. Linux, Coke and Pepsi,
etc.

/sigh

–
Robert W. Oliver II
President, OCS Solutions, Inc. - Web Hosting and Development

Toll-Free Phone - 1-800-672-8415

OCS Ruby Forums - http://www.rubyforums.com/
My Blog - http://www.rwoliver.com/

65

From: “Austin Z.” [email protected]

I’m just baffled that people are so opposed to Windows conventions that
they must install a poorly-matched emulation layer to make it feel
usable.

I’m not baffled.

Did you ever code in VB6? I did, once. Unless the alternative
was my family’s starvation, I never would again.

There are reasons why I prefer Ruby to VB6, and they’re the same
kinds of reasons I prefer bash to cmd.exe.

What baffles me is the lack of outrage on the part of folks who
who can use VB6 or cmd.exe without being deeply offended at these
abominations being perpetrated on the computing world.

:slight_smile:

(BTW, I realize there’s no point in arguing over this. I’m just
saying I’m not surprised some people feel very strongly about
these issues.)

Regards,

Bill

66

On 10/27/06, [email protected] [email protected]
wrote:

On Oct 26, 6:44 pm, “Austin Z.” [email protected] wrote:

I am equally comfortable in Unix and Windows – and the longtime Mac
folks who were at RubyConf this past weekend can tell you how quickly
I’ve adapted to the Mac in just two months (with some things that I
have yet to find a comfortable replacement for).
Would you like a candy? A pat on the back? A “who cares - just because
you want to increase the amount of work you have to do by making your
platforms completely disparate, doesn’t mean I have to?”

I’m just baffled that people are so opposed to Windows conventions that
they must install a poorly-matched emulation layer to make it feel
usable.

This isn’t about “my company mandates two different incompatible things:
that I run this Unix program that won’t yet compile on Windows and that
I run Windows.” This is about “I’m going to install this because it’s
the way I want to work, and the company won’t let me run Linux.”

This is very much about choosing to work in a way that’s different
than how the underlying platform works. What would Linux users do if
they heard someone was using a DOS compatibility layer to do all their
work, including a COMMAND.COM replacement. They’d mock them mercilessly.

WINE is given a bit more a free pass, but I think it’s no different: you
use it if you have to, not because you want to. The Linux user’s
goal isn’t to run Windows programs on Linux; it’s to run Linux programs
on Linux. It’s just that some of the useful programs aren’t native to
Linux, and therefore they must have WINE. I don’t know a single Linux
user who would choose to use Windows Explorer on WINE as opposed to
Konqueror or Nautilus.

So what gives folks who want to use Cygwin a free pass?

The reality, Mr Cunningham, is that your platforms are completely
disparate. Using Cygwin to pretend that they aren’t is lazy.

My statements, by the way, weren’t looking for pats on the back from
asinine twits; they were merely statements that it is not only possible
but easy to switch between various platforms without having to rely on
crutches like Cygwin. This is why I simply cannot understand the
laziness involved.

But maybe the real discussion is about Windows, I use Cygwin to
forget that Window even exists it is a therapy for me.
That’s the problem, then. If you want to forget Windows even exists
when you’re using Windows, why the HELL are you using Windows in the
first place? If your workplace requires that you use Windows, then
install coLinux and be done with it.
Yeah, because coLinux is a great, flawless alternative. Seriously:
what would someone gain by installing coLinux over Cygwin, if that
person wishes to develop for Windows? You get some speed, but Cygwin’s
speed is more than sufficient for many tasks.

If a person wants to develop for Windows, they should never use Cygwin
to do that. It’s that simple. Cygwin is not a viable alternative for
software development on Windows. It never has been. It’s a way to get
Unix programs to run on Windows through a compatibility layer. Licensing
issues with Cygwin make it a non-starter for pretty much anything else.
And, honestly, it’s not necessary. At work, I have a lot of Unix-style
command-line tools installed through the GNUWin32 project, and I have
mktex, too.

It’s a userland thing which is mostly nonsensical to run, and it’s
usually run by people who are too lazy to learn to do things in the
native platform.

slows me down, other than some warm and happy feeling about using
completely native solutions?

Obviously, you’ve never looked at the tools that I’ve mentioned. You
wouldn’t call them “graphical file managers” if you had. (Hint: they’re
rendered by the GUI, but then again, so is a modern console. Graphical
file managers are very different than these two programs; graphical file
managers tend to be mouse driven. Both DOpus and TC work with the mouse,
but are keyboard driven.)

Better to deal with things as they are if you must deal with an
operating system you do not prefer.
Why? What exactly do you gain?

The lack of an impedance mismatch. So what do you do when you go to a
colleague’s computer that doesn’t have Cygwin installed? Do you force
them to install it before you will even help them?

I didn’t think so.

-austin

67

On 10/27/06, Bill K. [email protected] wrote:

I’m just baffled that people are so opposed to Windows conventions
that they must install a poorly-matched emulation layer to make it
feel usable.
I’m not baffled.

Bully for you.

Did you ever code in VB6? I did, once. Unless the alternative was my
family’s starvation, I never would again.

I haven’t. I’ve used VBA and built some pretty impressive (if fragile)
stuff on top of Access and Word, but I’ve never had to use full-on VB.
Maybe I am different than elsewhom participating in this thread: I use
the tool that’s most appropriate to the environment. I was doing
something earlier this year where I needed to copy a dozen files (from
disparate locations) over to a single location, while stopping and
starting a Windows service. This would have been trivial to write in
Ruby. I did it in “Autoit3” because it let me add on a GUI in twenty
minutes – less time than it would have taken in Ruby (although the Ruby
version would have been much more maintainable).

I still write .cmd scripts for a lot of things (although I write more
Ruby scripts). I do this not because I like writing in the Windows
batch scripting language (I don’t), but because said scripts are far
more immediately useful and usable than writing for bash and Ruby. I can
hand these scripts to my coworkers and they can use them; sometimes
they’ll have to copy a couple of binaries, but these things just work.

There are reasons why I prefer Ruby to VB6, and they’re the same kinds
of reasons I prefer bash to cmd.exe.

I honestly, except possibly for aliases (which I’m using less and less
in Unix environments[1]), don’t see what REAL advantage bash gives
over cmd.exe. Remember: I’m fluent in both (which was the real point
my first paragraph to which Mr Cunningham responded). I find command-
line editing in bash a pain in the ass whether you’re in vi or emacs
bindings mode (set -o vi; it defaults to emacs).

  • Bash has history displayable through ‘history’. cmd.exe displays it
    as a selectable menu with F7 and cycles through F8. I’d score a minor
    point for cmd.exe; there’s a few advanced things you can do with bash
    and substitution on history recall, but I’ve rarely seen them used.
  • Bash can tab complete program names (in the path), filenames, and
    directories. cmd.exe can tab complete filenames and directories. Score
    one for bash (path program-name completion is the only thing I miss
    in cmd.exe).
  • Both have scripting languages; both scripting languages have some
    impressive capabilities. Bash’s language is slightly more powerful,
    but both are like pulling teeth. I’d rather use Ruby, and both bash
    and cmd.exe treat these equally.

There are other things, but by and large I find them both to be a wash
in the use. I don’t even miss “screen” on Windows because it’s trivial
to open another command window.

What baffles me is the lack of outrage on the part of folks who
who can use VB6 or cmd.exe without being deeply offended at these
abominations being perpetrated on the computing world.

Except that both actually do their job. I’m more outraged at PHP
than at VB6, because VB6 at least only affects Windows users.

Seriously, on an IBM mainframe, I’d use JCL (and that is truly ugly,
IMO) rather than insisting on a scripting language or shell that isn’t
part of the operating system install.

I think, Bill, what I’m most surprised at is the lack of pragmatism
presented by the folks who have suggested Cygwin as a solution. It’s
most definitely not a pragmatic solution 99% of the time; it’s a cop-
out. (I worked in an environment once where the DBA had insisted on the
presence of MKS to administer Oracle on Windows. This was the most
disastrous thing that I’d seen in a while, and it showed in how much
extra work was being done to maintain the Oracle processes.)

Cygwin has its place. That place is very limited.

-austin
[1] I use shell functions far more often these days. Aliases are mostly
useless for my purposes.

68

On 10/27/06, Joel VanderWerf [email protected] wrote:

  • most appropriate to the user

and maybe other factors as well. What this thread shows is that
different combinations of env/task/user will make the tradeoff come out
differently. No one size fits all.

By environment, I do not mean operating system. I mean the complex
intersection of operating system, task, user, and other users who
may have to deal with what I’ve written. For one-off stuff, I almost
always use irb.

For reusable stuff, I will generally use that which is platform
appropriate, if it applies to one platform. I’ll use something truly
portable if it’s got to be cross-platform.

That’s what I mean; simply using Cygwin because you want to hide the
fact that you’re on Windows is lazy at best. Using Cygwin because it
offers something that you absolutely must have to get your job done
and it doesn’t exist in a native Windows version (or, in the case of X
before Xming, it’s insanely priced) is pragmatic. It’s much easier for
me to tell people “install this Windows application to get X working
if you’re going to be working on the Unix machines” than “install this
whole environment and cross your fingers that your batch files always
work” (which, to be fair, they usually did; it’s still not as easy as
Xming, though).

As I just said: I don’t use cmd.exe because I love it. I use it
because I can take what I know from it and apply it to anyone else’s
computer in the company.

Without having to get them to install Cygwin because I’m not
interested in feeling like I’m using Windows.

and getting feedback that might prevent you from making a huge mistake.
Maybe bash has this too, but I’ve never seen a way to turn it on. The
same goes for wildcard completion:

$ rm *.rb

I know in ksh and bash with vi mode (set -o vi) you can get that with
<*>.

  • Both have scripting languages; both scripting languages have some
    impressive capabilities. Bash’s language is slightly more powerful,
    but both are like pulling teeth. I’d rather use Ruby, and both bash
    and cmd.exe treat these equally.

Yes to the teeth simile.

On 10/27/06, Joel VanderWerf [email protected] wrote:

There are other things, but by and large I find them both to be a wash
in the use. I don’t even miss “screen” on Windows because it’s trivial
to open another command window.
But not trivial (even possible?), without screen, to detach from a
session, move to another host, and reconnect to the session. Pls tell me
I’m wrong…

If you use rdp it’s trivial :wink: Once enabled. However, that feature of
screen is related primarily to Unix pseudo-TTY support more than
anything else. Windows isn’t designed to work that way.

And that’s really the whole point, I guess.

-austin

69

Austin Z. wrote:

On 10/27/06, Bill K. [email protected] wrote:
…

I’m not baffled.

Bully for you.

(That’s the grin without the cat, in case you’re wondering.)

Did you ever code in VB6? I did, once. Unless the alternative was my
family’s starvation, I never would again.

I haven’t. I’ve used VBA and built some pretty impressive (if fragile)
stuff on top of Access and Word, but I’ve never had to use full-on VB.
Maybe I am different than elsewhom participating in this thread: I use
the tool that’s most appropriate to the environment. I was doing
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Tool choice is a tradeoff between:

  • most appropriate to the environment

  • most appropriate to the task

  • most appropriate to the user

and maybe other factors as well. What this thread shows is that
different combinations of env/task/user will make the tradeoff come out
differently. No one size fits all.

…

  • Bash has history displayable through ‘history’. cmd.exe displays it
    …
  • Bash can tab complete program names (in the path), filenames, and
    …

I like zsh’s history completion. There’s nothing like typing

$ !rm

and getting feedback that might prevent you from making a huge mistake.
Maybe bash has this too, but I’ve never seen a way to turn it on. The
same goes for wildcard completion:

$ rm *.rb

  • Both have scripting languages; both scripting languages have some
    impressive capabilities. Bash’s language is slightly more powerful,
    but both are like pulling teeth. I’d rather use Ruby, and both bash
    and cmd.exe treat these equally.

Yes to the teeth simile.

There are other things, but by and large I find them both to be a wash
in the use. I don’t even miss “screen” on Windows because it’s trivial
to open another command window.

But not trivial (even possible?), without screen, to detach from a
session, move to another host, and reconnect to the session. Pls tell me
I’m wrong…

70

[email protected] wrote:

David, David, David …

The Forbidden Fruit - Penny Arcade

You know it could be like this. Just like this. Always.

Best,
James

Always having random camp Mac geeks hit on me?

Alright, that IS an argument, but it’d make one damn expensive date :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Well, 160GB of images of CDs long lost to time and housemovings
representing 15 -ish years of computer gaming say that my primary
computer stays a Windows machine for a while yet, if only because iMacs
just don’t come with graphics cards beefy enough. Different needs, money
not growing on trees (for custom configs), all that. Gimme an OS X that
will dual-boot from my box, and I’ll very happily give a whirl and / or
pay for a licence.

I wasn’t trying to jab at the quality of Apple hardware or software,
just at elitist “you can’t play with us because you don’t have the
Malibu Barbie with rollerskates” attitudes, and tried to give Ed
something to ward off the peer pressure his notebook reputedly suffered
from :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

And for what it’s worth, for my purposes, the performance of the
one-click installer is Good Enough ™. Purposes being the odd personal
app to keep track of stuff on backup DVDs etc.

David V.

71

On 10/27/06, Austin Z. [email protected] wrote:

is

need to learn zsh for professional reasons, and I have sooo many other
interesting stuff I cannot even read about.

I simply do not understand that. I cannot understand that.

But it is simple, I use Windows because I do not have any choice, I use
it
at one sole machine, imposed by my company I administer about 100
machines
in *X, I am lucky, but not as lucky as you, because you seem to have a
completely
raional approach to using Windows. I am a very emotional guy and I
hate
Windows and Cygwin is my therapy.
I think that this is true for many others but I am not sure of course.

It

essentially boils down to “I don’t want to know anything about this
platform that I must use.”

100% right

I am equally comfortable in Unix and

Windows – and the longtime Mac folks who were at RubyConf this past
weekend can tell you how quickly I’ve adapted to the Mac in just two
months (with some things that I have yet to find a comfortable
replacement for). When I had to use VMS, I made sure that I
understood it (even though I thought its command-line shell was
crap). The only time I do something different is when I install bash
on the four Unix-style platforms for which I develop if they don’t
already have it. Why? Because I wrote my build drivers using bash
conventions. It’d be no different than if I’d written the build
drivers with Ruby (then I wouldn’t care what shell people used).

Now this is great for you, but assuming that this is a generally
appliable
approach, well I donnu.
For myself, I try to chose what I learn, I was good in BS2000 e.g. but
why should I bother with Windows if I am not interested in it, can you
give
me a single reason?

bigots).
There are very, very good reasons not to support Windows, especially on
philosophical grounds.
The nice adjective you have used seems to indicate that you know that.

I feel that is kind of a strange assumption, very honestly, if it were
true
the discussion would be over of course.

But maybe the real discussion is about Windows, I use Cygwin to *forget

that Window even exists* it is a therapy for me.

That’s the problem, then.

I told you it was, it is not a complicated affair.

If you want to forget Windows even exists

when you’re using Windows, why the HELL are you using Windows in the
first place? If your workplace requires that you use Windows, then
install coLinux and be done with it.

I try to keep my work sometimes I use a life distribution like Knoppix,
I
might even get into trouble by using Cygwin but I guess I can talk
myself
out of this.

Otherwise, install Linux or

FreeBSD or something else on your machine and stop pretending you’re
using Unix.

Not an option

If you can’t stand working in the Windows cmd.exe, spend the money to

get TotalCommander or Directory Opus.

Money? Now you seem to forget that I am happy with Cygwin, why should I
buy
a replacement?

I personally prefer TC on

Windows, but others swear by DOpus. I am basically at the command-line
to run specific scripts which don’t pause when finished. I rarely
navigate directories by the command-line (I will usually navigate with
TC and then run cmd.exe if I need a command window).

Your quote (“The reasonable man adapts himself…”) is somewhat apt.

Leave good old GBS alone, now that I got his name right, will you :wink:
BTW I always underline that the logical conclusion from GBS’ quote is
that
“the reasonable man cannot change the world”, but not that “the
unreasonable
man will” this is like mutation, mutation is necessary for evolution and
yet
very very few mutations contribute to evolution. (in the simple model)

However, you’re not going to change Windows by being unreasonable on

Windows (e.g., expecting Unix behaviour to mesh well);

What are you talking about, I would not change Windows, I would ignore
it
if I could, really does not make sense.

others won’t

change Linux by being unreasonable on Linux (e.g., running WINE).
Better to deal with things as they are if you must deal with an
operating system you do not prefer.

But Cygwin is a reality not an illusion! By using it I deal with my
Cygwin
wrapper (hiding Windows, somehow) and believe me when my bash is the
only
one to see my pendrive when plugged in and our TechSupport cannot handle
this, I think Cygwin is it’s money worth [ yes that is a joke ].

-austin

–
Austin Z. * [email protected] * http://www.halostatue.ca/
* [email protected] * You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. // halo • statue
* [email protected]

Cheers
Robert

–
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.

  • George Bernard Shaw
72

On 2006-10-27 12:09:44 -0400, “Austin Z.” [email protected]
said:

If a person wants to develop for Windows, they should never use Cygwin
to do that. It’s that simple.

Well, if you consider scripting for administration purposes development
then I have to take issue with that… Writing scripts using bash
conventions and platform-specific accomodation has severely diminished
the amount of effort I have to put in to maintain scripts across Linux,
FreeBSD and Windows… Of course, I use ruby wherever it makes sense
but simply wrapping shell commands in ruby is overkill.

That is not to say I like cygwin… compared to a real *nix it is
mighty crufty… for example, getting cron to work reliably qualifies
as a true Feat Of Strength! Using cygwin does ease administration in a
mixed environment though…

But, then again, most of the invective seems aimed at cygwin as a
substitute for proper *nix development…

Cheers,
Tim

73

On 10/27/06, Robert D. [email protected] wrote:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.

  • George Bernard Shaw

Really, I’m surprised this discussion has gone on as long as it has.
But,
in summary, we know now that:

  1. The Ruby one-click installer is slower at many tasks than the Cygwin
    Ruby
    (but some benchmarks are mixed, so your mileage may vary, as always)
  2. People have strongly held beliefs about the tools that they choose to
    use. You won’t change people, nor should you, because people will find
    what
    works best for them and what they’re most productive with.
  3. Mac’s are expensive for the same level of hardware as a PC :wink: (come
    on,
    I couldn’t help but to put that in)
  4. Gotta love the comic strips inserted by David :wink:

–
Robert W. Oliver II
President, OCS Solutions, Inc. - Web Hosting and Development

Toll-Free Phone - 1-800-672-8415

OCS Ruby Forums - http://www.rubyforums.com/
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