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Date:Mon Apr 10 18:41:29 2000 
Subject:Re: List of Possible Poplog Projects 
From:ug55aes 
Volume-ID:1000410.07 

> 15. CGI toolkit
> 
>      This project would provide a "lib cgi.p" that would let people
>      use Poplog for CGI programming.  In particular, this project should
>      make it possible for UNIX people to write #! scripts easily.  This
>      in turn requires support from the rationalised startup project.
> 

Speaking as someone who works with newbies all day, I think there's a very
good case for making #! scripts available without mentioning CGI:

The typical 1st year undergrad is fresh from the Windows world, might have
experience of some BASIC flavour, and are experiencing a mild culture
shock in the move to UNIX.  Many didn't get into computers until after
the demise of DOS, so have never heard of interfaces other than 'complete
graphical interface', which MS now supports.

They're then shown an alien (or 'formal', as the natives call
it) language, and made to learn it.  This involves writing in one window,
in order to manipulate the contents of another window (the analogy to
writing of the screen, of course, has no weight to people who have no
experience of text-mode).

Of course, they all get used to it after a while, but many of them stick
with Windows for day-to-day work, because they don't see any benefit from
UNIX, and few of them think about how programs can solve their everyday
problems (IMHO, slowing their learning significantly).

It's not going to change the world, but providing #! scripts, and teaching
newbies about file manipulation (which they probably know about) as well
as text manipulaton (which they probably don't), would provide something
that they might miss when they go back to Windows, giving them an
incentive to learn about both UNIX and Poplog.

	- Andrew