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Waiting to Compile

Mom informs me that her excellent computer-repair instincts had nothing to do with her education in biology or her experience in analyzing medical literature.

My model for my suggestion for your computer was starting a baby on solid food. You start with one food at a time, wait a few days, and then add another, and then another. That way, if something causes an allergy, you know what it is. Simple really.

Today at work I was really bored, so I tried downloading and installing the Dada Engine. This wonderful software generates random text from a "grammar", which is just a text file consisting of rules. There are a number of fun examples of the Dada Engine in action, including the Postmodernism Generator and the Random Adolescent Poetry Generator. I was really looking forward to inventing my own scripts.

Unfortunately, I couldn't compile the software at work. It requires GNU make, and at work we use Solaris (duh). I should have known this would happen... I had the same trouble with the Apache webserver last year. Now, even a dumb tech writer like me can install gcc and GNU make eventually, but my knowledge of C is so weak... I'd rather not spend hours and hours trying to graft GNU-stuff onto Solaris. I managed to do it once before, but it was singularly unpleasant.

Maybe some bright enterprising young person should rewrite the Dada Engine in Java. Just as an exercise.

Posted by Evan Goer on Dec. 21, 2001 at 3:00 PM