Fabulous Adventures In Coding

Eric Lippert's Blog

True Confessions of a Language Developer

There's a funny thing about tools that I first noticed many years ago: people using tools often know much more about actually using the tools than the people who built the tools!  Automotive engineers are not usually race car drivers, scalpel manufacturers are usually not surgeons, and so on.

That's certainly the case with the script technologies.  I confess!  What I know about the practicalities of scripting the IE object model, or administering a network with WMI, or building a multi-tier ASP site, you could fit into a matchbox.  I know enough to get by in a pinch, but that's nothing compared to the real experts.

Got a theoretical question about language design?  I'm you're guy. But if you've got a practical question about scripting, lemme tell ya, no one understands practical scripting better than The Scripting GuysYou know that massive book with the faucet puller on the cover, aka “The Windows 2000 Scripting Guide“?  That's them, and they have a new blog. 

http://blogs.msdn.com/gstemp/

 

Published Wednesday, February 11, 2004 1:59 PM by Eric Lippert
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Kent Tegels said:

All language designers are arrogant. Goes with the territory... :-) -- Larry Wall
February 11, 2004 4:21 PM
 

David S said:

> I confess! What I know about the practicalities of scripting the IE object model, or administering a network with WMI, or building a multi-tier ASP site, you could fit into a matchbox.

Whew, there's hope for me then.
February 11, 2004 6:19 PM
 

Jack Mayhoff [MSFT] said:

And we know where arrogance leads us.

Thats why we have so many software issues, its because of that mindset.

People like that are too high risk for the company and should work elsewhere.
February 12, 2004 1:10 AM
 

Fabulous Adventures In Coding said:

April 9, 2004 6:09 PM

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About Eric Lippert

Eric Lippert is a senior developer on the Microsoft C# compiler team. Before that he worked on the framework of Visual Studio Tools For Office. Before that, he worked on the compilers, runtimes and tools for VBScript, JScript, Windows Script Host and other Microsoft Scripting technologies. He lives in Seattle and spends his free time editing books about programming languages, playing the piano, and trying to keep his tiny sailboat upright in Puget Sound.

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