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by patrck 1489 days ago
Schools don't teach macro languages is probably the biggest problem.

Before YAML or Dockerfiles, it was the way to declare state and reduce complexity for sysadmins. Basically, any time you had data that needed multiple projections (eg. hosts to forward and reverse zonefiles), you reached for m4. The same went for unwieldy configs (apache, sendmail, etc.).

Culturally, macro languages seem to be just learned ad-hoc, ie. how many here have had a class in m4 or TeX?
2 comments
jamesfinlayson 1489 days ago
I had a class that "strongly recommended" Latex - it was for formal proofs (CSP was one thing we learned - I can't remember the others now).
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yjftsjthsd-h 1489 days ago
> how many here have had a class in m4 or TeX?

I haven't, but could be interested; are there any good tutorials or such that you might suggest?

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patrck 1489 days ago
Gnu M4 manual works well, while for TeX there's the Gentle Introduction.

For an abstract, design/implementation introduction, though? There isn't. We don't learn about macro languages just as we don't learn about domain specific languages.

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