* * * * *
                                        
                                 Bitch session
                                        
Mark [1] called, needing some help with sendmail. He's working on a project
for John the paper millionaire of a dotcom and needs to get it to do
something rather silly actually. But Mark does not care for TCP/IP
programming or Internet programming at all.

“I don't understand what I'm doing,” he does. “What do I get from sendmail?”

“You get the header section in RFC822 format, then a blank line, then the
body of the message, on standard input to the program,” I said.

“Why do I have to concern myself with this crap?” he asked. Seems he's too
used to having library code handle any lower level protocol stuff. Yes, SMTP
is low level to him in this project. Parsing this crap is too much for him to
handle. I can relate—databases are alien to me, what with all that SQL crap
and what not.

“Sorry, no one has really bothered with making libraries for this. Something
about it being too easy or something.”

He continued one bitching about the SMTP protocol and having to actually know
anything about it. He's happier working with telephony protocols, which to
him, work better since they have error detection and recovery, while nothing
in the TCP/IP world does. At least, not to his satisfaction.

Then again, Mark will do anything for money.

[1] http://www.conman.org/people/myg/

Email author at sean@conman.org