Re: Introducing Guix "Features"! (Was: Syntactic Diabetes)

[Attila Lendvai]

> there for most of the time already. And if you think about it,
> symlinking stuff to /etc is a service.

i've arrived to guix after 3+ decades of programming, most of that in 
opensource environments, unix-like OS'es, and more than a decade using linux as 
my primary OS and lisp as my goto language.

it could be me, of course, but it took me months of tinkering until i 
understood the guix service vs shepherd service nomenclature. and i still need 
to focus when i'm dealing with foo-service-type and shepherd services at the 
same time.

this nomenclature was an obstacle to understanding, because the naming suggests 
something that was misleading me.

for an average unix user a service is a process that is running in the 
backgroud, doing stuff mostly without any user interaction. you can try to 
argue this away, but i'm afraid that this is the state of things.

and if you care whether your words (code) is communicating what you want to be 
understood by your audience, then you must consider their model of reality.

which reminds me of:

“Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for 
machines to execute.”
        — Abelson & Sussman, SICP, preface to the first edition

--
• attila lendvai
• PGP: 963F 5D5F 45C7 DFCD 0A39
--
“As a rule, whatever we don’t deal with in our lives, we pass on to our 
children. Our unfinished emotional business becomes theirs. As a therapist said 
to me, "Children swim in their parents’ unconscious like fish swim in the sea."”
        — Gábor Máté (1944–), 'In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts' (2008)