Re: Using Lua for config files

[Andrew Starks <andrew.starks@...>]

On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 2:12 AM, Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean there isn't something in that backpack!

The main problem with "paranoid" is that it's misdirected. Assuming
that you live in a world of finite resources, then acting rationally
means spending time on parts of the product that will, in the wild,
result in more value.

Paranoid may achieve a technical goal, even if mostly a theoretical
one. But will the user have fewer real-world problems, or more, simply
because you've made their life more restricted?

I have had this discussion with people at work. They're concerned
about what will happen when our users will have access to our
"internals". "Tech support is hard enough now. What happens when we're
debugging their scripts?"

Security and support are real things to consider. I believe that this
particular approach to those concerns is rooted in a misconception
that "regular users" are stupider than "real developers." As an
aggregate, they're probably different in important ways. But anybody
poking around in a scripting file probably passes the "sufficiently
curious" test.

Developers that I know spend a great deal of time working on problems
or with tools that are beyond their experience. In that sense,
everyone that is "sufficiently curious" tends to keep themselves in a
state of "slightly stoopid."

So, the user writing loops in their script is probably doing it to
solve a problem and not so much to cause one.

-Andrew