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The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy

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Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy

#221

Post by rlucas »

rocqua wrote: post #183
rsync wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This could be either a no-true-Scotsman, or a tautology." It's even worse ! I am saying that working in terminals, with strings of text and non-binary-format config files ... and all of the tools built around that ... is an end in itself . Every single "broken" example in the OP is something that I find non-remarkable and, in fact, makes perfect sense to me.

To argue for the OP, consider the case of passwd being parsed on every system call. That is simply sub-optimal. (It also seems exaggerated to me, and feels like a prime candidate for caching). Further, there is an immense value in GUI based systems: discoverability. On a GUI, you can learn how to use a program without ever consulting a manual just by inspecting your screen. This addition is what brought the computer…

Discoverability is definitely a feature of any decent post-2000 *nix terminal environment.

Man and apropos get you a long way.

The near ubiquity of --help as a flag helps too.

Well managed program distributions will even tell your shell how to tab-complete what it wants.

MOST CRUCIALLY, though, the text of a command line or config snippet can be pasted, emailed, im'ed, blogged, and found with a search engine! Try describing how to navigate through a moderately complex gui in text or by phone... it's a disaster.

Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy

#222

Post by [deleted] »

rocqua wrote: post #183
rsync wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This could be either a no-true-Scotsman, or a tautology." It's even worse ! I am saying that working in terminals, with strings of text and non-binary-format config files ... and all of the tools built around that ... is an end in itself . Every single "broken" example in the OP is something that I find non-remarkable and, in fact, makes perfect sense to me.

To argue for the OP, consider the case of passwd being parsed on every system call. That is simply sub-optimal. (It also seems exaggerated to me, and feels like a prime candidate for caching). Further, there is an immense value in GUI based systems: discoverability. On a GUI, you can learn how to use a program without ever consulting a manual just by inspecting your screen. This addition is what brought the computer…

[deleted]

Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy

#223

Post by wahern »

CalChris wrote: post #155
moosingin3space wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally have never heard Rustaceans defend poor design choices like that before.

Well, if you don't get that someone else might see something as a flaw then perhaps you wouldn't understand that you may be defending a bad design choice. I use Rust. There's a bunch of things I do not like about Rust. Its macro language is nigh on unusable. A macro language should be an expedient; it should allow you to get textual things done, committing necessary atrocities along the way knowing that the result mu…

M4 is a standard POSIX utility and it's Turing complete. It's difficult to out-class recursive string macro expansion for sheer simplicity and sheer ability to confuse the heck out of yourself.

Alas, while it's a mandatory POSIX utility (AFAIU), some Linux distributions have saw fit to remove it from base installs.

Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy

#224

Post by greenhouse_gas »

white-flame wrote: post #179

Some of my primary beefs with Unix, stated more concisely than the rambling article: 1) Text is for humans, and is generally incomprehensible to machines. Encodings, arbitrary config file formats, terminals, etc, are all piles of thoughtless one-off hacks. It's a horrible substrate for compositing software functionality, through either pipes or files. 2) Hierarchical directory structures quickly become insufficient.…

1. Binary formats are great, until they break. I would take plain strings configuration over Win95 registry any day.

Actually, I'd take plain text conf over Win10 registry any day also. How do you transfer your (arbitrary) program settings from one computer to another? I can tell you how on Unix. How would you on windows?

2. / based filesystems are head and shoulders better than Windows.

Why should moving a directory from my internal hard drive to a SSD over USB change my location?

On Unix I can keep my home directory (or Program Files) on a NFS share, SMB share or SSD harddrive.

Can I do the same on Windows?

3. It is, which is why SELinux was invented. But that's to hard, so no one uses it.

4. All major OSs (Both Unix/Linux and Windows) are C or C++ based.

But here's something interesting: in the 90s, it was considered "advanced" to have the GUI an inherent part of the OS, rather than being just another program. Windows and Plan9 did that.

Yet, it turned out that admining a system without a 1st class command line is a pain, so windows is rolling back with Power shell.

Maybe Windows will one day make their Server headless, and where you can do full sysadmining through SSH

Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy

#225

Post by SFJulie »

Prefer an original older funnier version : http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/operating-systems/linux/

I suspect the author of this site have contributed to the linux haters handbook.

Some quotes:

“Linux printing was designed and implemented by people working to preserve the rainforest by making it utterly impossible to consume paper.” – Athas

“ALSA is like the emperors new clothes. It never works, but people say it’s because you’re a noob.”

“Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California.” – Edsger Dijkstra

“[firefox] is always doing something, even if it’s just calculating the opportune moment to crash inexplicably” – kfx

....

Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy

#226

Post by mulmen »

nickbauman wrote: post #91
Analemma_ wrote: post #10

Everyone should, at some point, read The Unix-Haters Handbook. A great deal of it is outdated or simply wrong, but it does have a running theme of a prediction that has largely been borne out: people assuming that all Unix's flaws are actually virtues and that if you don't think so, then you Just Don't Get It. It's not hard to see how this happened: since pretty much all computers that people normally interact with a…

I love motorcycles too. I've owned many sophisticated bikes: Ducatis with their strange Desmodromic heads. With the ability to dial an exchange of torque to horsepower at the handlebars. Buells with their fuel-in-frame chassis. My current Suzuki even has 4 sensors in the airbox alone. One that measures the air input pressure. One that measures the oxygen level. One that measures the air temperature. Really amazing pe…

I have a 1973 CL350 which I am currently getting back on the road. They are fantastic bikes, largely because they are robust, dead simple and Honda made tens of thousands of them. Having said that, they did have some components that have not aged well.

The number one flaw on these bikes in my opinion is the stock carburetors. Honda used a constant velocity type carburetor which in theory provides very smooth throttle action and is easier to ride. In reality the vacuum diaphragm is a very delicate part that frequently fails with tiny air holes that leak vacuum, causing a mismatch in the throttle input between the cylinders (twin carb two cylinder, one per cylinder). This is a similar failure mode to your modern Suzuki air pressure sensor failing.

The other pain point is the mechanical points in the ignition system. This is an area of constant fiddling with adjustment and new condensers. It's much preferred to simply replace the points system with a "modern" (1980s technology) electronic ignition system. This removes the moving parts and greatly extends the life of a tune-up.

Old bikes are super cool and the 350 platform is a fantastic one but even back then bikes had "high tech" parts that did not age well and gaps where better tech had not been invented. The great thing about the 350 platform is that due to its popularity people are still coming up with solutions. In this way a Honda 350 is similar to Unix.

Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy

#227

Post by jpeg_hero »

whack wrote: post #125
wyclif wrote: post #14

This article was written hastily, and I don’t want to further improve it. You’re lucky I wrote it. I feel so privileged to read this random guy's blog, and it's terrific that he eschews inflating his ego so well.

As an hobbyist blogger, I can perfectly empathise with why the author wrote that. People love to crap all over a blogger who dares to post his thoughts on a private blog, without first subjecting it to PhD-thesis-level scrutiny. This really gets on my nerves for the same reasons that engineers get pissed off when they decide to open source a pet project and suddenly start getting "URGENT ASAP" feature requests from e…

My favorite is when somebody makes a blog post "A Great Way to Do X in Unix" and then posts a bash script they wrote.

You can just start the countdown until all the unix greybeards come out and slams them with why it's so wrong and how to do it with some obscure bash feature.

Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy

#228

Post by j2kun »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #217
pjmlp wrote: post #49

"We really are using a 1970s era operating system well past its sell-by date. We get a lot done, and we have fun, but let's face it, the fundamental design of Unix is older than many of the readers of Slashdot, while lots of different, great ideas about computing and networks have been developed in the last 30 years. Using Unix is the computing equivalent of listening only to music by David Cassidy." Rob Pike 2004, h…

But just because an idea is old doesn't mean it is necessarily bad. Some ideas like Unix Philosophy have stood the test of time. The fact that this statement was made in 2004 and that Unix is still going stronger 13 years later is proof.

Inertia is only proof of inertia.

Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy

#229

Post by moosingin3space »

braveo wrote: post #165
moosingin3space wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally have never heard Rustaceans defend poor design choices like that before.

You mean the way they defend some of the numerics in rust? yeah, totally have never seen that...

What in particular are you referring to? I ask honestly, because this "my way or the highway" attitude has never been the Rust community's way.

Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy

#230

Post by mulmen »

sedachv wrote: post #176
nickbauman wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love motorcycles too. I've owned many sophisticated bikes: Ducatis with their strange Desmodromic heads. With the ability to dial an exchange of torque to horsepower at the handlebars. Buells with their fuel-in-frame chassis. My current Suzuki even has 4 sensors in the airbox alone. One that measures the air input pressure. One that measures the oxygen level. One that measures the air temperature. Really amazing pe…

> It will be in a junkyard within ten years though. I won't be able to find those sensors in a few years. Not true. You will be able to get an aftermarket ECU that can just ignore the sensors and run in open-loop mode. That will be exactly the same as running with carburetors: fixed fuel/air ratio that is almost always wrong. This is also the failure mode for OBDII cars - sensor failures lead to the ECU running in op…

Maintenance "headaches" are part of the appeal of old bikes. It's much easier to learn how an internal combustion powered vehicle works on an old Honda bike than a new one, or on a new car.

Compared to other bikes of their day these are very simple to maintain and they were designed from the start to be kept running by the average person. It really depends on what you are looking for in a bike.

If enjoying turning a wrench on a Saturday makes me a hipster then pass the beard wax.

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