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Kernighan and Pike were right: Do one thing, and do it well

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Re: Kernighan and Pike were right: Do one thing, and do it well

#251

Post by TZubiri »

vimsee wrote: post #236
TZubiri wrote: post #201

" The model [Unix Philosophy] never successfully made the jump to desktop operating systems. So popular modern programs like Photoshop and Word are about as “encrusted with dubious features” " You export your phtoshop design as a .png file and you import it into word. There you go. Windowed desktop programs like Photoshop and Word do offer interoperability, in the form of files. (Which by the way is another way progr…

> You export your phtoshop design as a .png file and you import it into word. There you go. > Windowed desktop programs like Photoshop and Word do offer interoperability, in the form of files. I think you are comparing apples and oranges here. Maybe if Photoshop and MS Word used the same dedicated underlying binary/application to read and process the png, then maybe it would follow the UNIX philosophy a bit closer?

"Maybe if Photoshop and MS Word used the same dedicated underlying binary/application to read and process the png"

The unix philosophy is to do one thing and do it well, it doesn't need to conform with expectations about each binary achieving low-level tasks.

What even would be "reading and processing pngs"? Sounds like a dumb technical way to divide responsibilities. I rather have responsibilities of apps be user-defined like "editing images" and "writing documents".

The unix philosophy precedes the development of the UNIX ecosystem, it's anachronistic to understand an OS based on how applications ended up interpreting it.

It's like conflating a constitution of a country for its laws.

Re: Kernighan and Pike were right: Do one thing, and do it well

#252

Post by vimsee »

TZubiri wrote: post #251
vimsee wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You export your phtoshop design as a .png file and you import it into word. There you go. > Windowed desktop programs like Photoshop and Word do offer interoperability, in the form of files. I think you are comparing apples and oranges here. Maybe if Photoshop and MS Word used the same dedicated underlying binary/application to read and process the png, then maybe it would follow the UNIX philosophy a bit closer?

"Maybe if Photoshop and MS Word used the same dedicated underlying binary/application to read and process the png" The unix philosophy is to do one thing and do it well, it doesn't need to conform with expectations about each binary achieving low-level tasks. What even would be "reading and processing pngs"? Sounds like a dumb technical way to divide responsibilities. I rather have responsibilities of apps be user-de…

I still stand by my previous answer.

Re: Kernighan and Pike were right: Do one thing, and do it well

#253

Post by gardenhedge »

slashdev wrote: post #247
gardenhedge wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A monolith has more engineers working on it though and chances are some of them won't be great.

Those same engineers will still be there in the microservices world. You can argue that the damage they can do is reduced, but I don’t think that’s always true.

That's my point though. Damage a monolith - big trouble. Damage a microservice - much more approachable to rewrite or replace.

Re: Kernighan and Pike were right: Do one thing, and do it well

#254

Post by Ensorceled »

saghm wrote: post #232
Ensorceled wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The En prefix means “causes to be”. Things can become shitty but “en” changes it to a deliberate act. Thus shitification is process of becoming shitty but enshitification is the act of making things shitty. So, it’s not as general a term as you are implying and definitely the usage in this article doesn’t make sense.

Why does "causes to be" necessarily imply intention? I don't think that's nearly as definitive as you're claiming. > It’s not as general a term as you are implying My point is that even if the term isn't "supposed" to be general it definitely sounds like that to a non-trivial number of people, which is why these sort of discussions crop up almost every time the term gets mentioned in comment threads on this site.

If your boss said, "This Wilson project is critical."

And you said "I'll ensure it gets done by Friday."

Would you expect to be fired for failing to take initiative?

Re: Kernighan and Pike were right: Do one thing, and do it well

#255

Post by loph »

libele wrote: post #218
loph wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hold in my hand a "Unix Reference Card," second edition, March 1979. There are 10 options listed for "ls": l, f, a, s, d, r, u, c, i, f, g My recollection is that this card was for Unix V7.

the "purple card" of myth and legend!? please take a picture.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/n1kdo/53136436051/in/dateposte...

Re: Kernighan and Pike were right: Do one thing, and do it well

#256

Post by maxweylandt »

krapp wrote: post #197
maxweylandt wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That caught my attention too. The misuse is especially strange because the author both cites Doctorow and links to a definition in line with Doctorow's usage, before then using it in a completely different sense https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/enshittification

It isn't misuse - this is just how language works. Especially with what is essentially a meme word.

I'm not a prescriptivist when it comes to language; if a meaning evolves that's just dandy.

I do think it's odd to link to a definition of a word as the author does, and then use it differently without explanation (potentially depriving the reader of some interesting insight into the phenomena under discussion, if the reasons are good).

Secondly, doesn't 'misuse'really just mean 'used differently from how most people use it'? In which case, I think the descriptor probably applies, given the word's recent coinage and limited usage

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