
Going Beyond Grep for Searching Source Code (ack | ag) - draegtun
http://blog.newrelic.com/2015/01/28/grep-ack-ag/
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ggreer
I want to give a shout-out to Andy Lester, the author of ack and this blog
post. Before publishing, he asked me to review the text. He wanted to ensure
it was factually correct and that I had no issues with his evaluation of ag. I
suggested a few bits he could flesh-out, but I had no qualms with the original
post. It was very courteous of him to go out of his way to make sure I was
happy.

We don't communicate often, but every interaction I've had with Andy has been
positive. So I'm a little disappointed when people compliment ag while
disparaging ack. Yes, ag is faster. But it's not like ack is particularly
slow. And as Andy's post points out, they do have different features. Even if
you think ag strictly dominates, remember: If not for ack, ag would never have
existed. The only reason I wrote ag was because I used ack all the time and
wanted it to be faster.

It's bizarre how something so trivial can make people so opinionated. Andy and
I make tools to search code. But looking at some of the discussion over the
years, you'd think we we're working on competing cancer treatments.

