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The Unix Philosophy

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Re: The Unix Philosophy

#231

Post by hawkice »

philh wrote: post #66
dredmorbius wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ESR's views particularly on guns, libertarian economics and politics, and AGW, all present pretty standard cases of assuming a frame and fitting all data to that frame. Chopping, discarding, and/or fabricating data as necessary to do so. That actually directly calls into question engineering validity, as solid engineering is solidly based in reality and a realistic interpretation of facts. Also the ability to discard…

> ESR's political views call much of his work into question. Presumably this question, whatever it is, can be answered by looking at his work. Do you think ESR's technical work and technical writings fail to stand up to scrutiny?

Indeed, this is the critical question. If L. Ron Hubbard secretly but accurately predicted the lottery numbers for last week, it doesn't mean we have to go back and change them. Things can seem wrong/impossible/against your worldview, but that sense doesn't help quite so much as _just looking_.

Fundamentally, calling things into question has little value until we generate an answer to the question it was called into. Considering it's relatively easy to judge him on the technical work, why not?

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#232

Post by dredmorbius »

peteretep wrote: post #229
dredmorbius wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it's not ad hominem at all. Ad homimen would be "people named Eric cannot be trusted". This is calling into question ESR's general credibility, based on his record. That's a character judgement . I'm also not saying ESR is wrong in all things -- a consistently wrong indicator is useful (read the opposite of what it says). An inconsistently wrong one is maddening: you've got to pay close attention to what it…

Ad hominem is where you discount an argument based on the person making it. I'm not sure where the name thing is meant to come in to it.

I suppose the fallacy is where the attributes are irrelevant to the argument.

There's a somewhat related comment I'd seen recently which I've found useful:

Nota bene: a fallacious ad hominem only occurs when an accusation against the person serves as a premise to the conclusion. An attack upon that person as a further conclusion isn't fallacious and may, in fact, be morally mandatory.

https://plus.google.com/+StevenFlaeck/posts/EP88WvFohWr

That's not quite what I'm doing here: I'm leveraging the attack on credibility to discount further statements from ESR. But for numerous reasons of psychology and general reputation, if not a strict formal logic sense, there's a strong rationale to this.

Or: the narrator has been shown unreliable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credibility

Traditionally, modern, credibility has two key components: trustworthiness and expertise, which both have objective and subjective components. Trustworthiness is based more on subjective factors, but can include objective measurements such as established reliability.

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#233

Post by dredmorbius »

phlakaton wrote: post #139
dredmorbius wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ESR's views particularly on guns, libertarian economics and politics, and AGW, all present pretty standard cases of assuming a frame and fitting all data to that frame. Chopping, discarding, and/or fabricating data as necessary to do so. That actually directly calls into question engineering validity, as solid engineering is solidly based in reality and a realistic interpretation of facts. Also the ability to discard…

You say you distrust the author's views and opinions because of his politics. I say: good! You should never take an author's work at face value. Every bit of nonfiction you read should be read critically. Nobody's judgment is infallible – not even Nobel prizewinners.

No, not because of his politics, but because of (among other elements) his political argument methods.

If ESR would pose credible arguments and facts, exhibit critical thinking facility, not stoop to denigrating his counterparts, etc., I'd find his points of view more substantive.

But he does none of that, and, rather, the opposite.

I do seek out contradicting evidence, among my mantras (and a conspicuous posted note to myself) is "seek to disprove". I've changed my mind and/or views on a number of significant points and in some cases major views over the past few years. I do that based on evidence and argument, though. It's not a casual process, and doesn't happen easily.

But being able to admit I'm wrong is a large part of it. Also: not insisting on being wrong (valuing belief consistency with time over consistency with observed reality).

Questioning everything is, however, rather exhausting. Developing heuristics for when to start digging in to apparent bullshit claims helps a lot.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28ge14/on_nons...

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#234

Post by yeahdude »

dredmorbius wrote: post #232
peteretep wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad hominem is where you discount an argument based on the person making it. I'm not sure where the name thing is meant to come in to it.

I suppose the fallacy is where the attributes are irrelevant to the argument. There's a somewhat related comment I'd seen recently which I've found useful: Nota bene: a fallacious ad hominem only occurs when an accusation against the person serves as a premise to the conclusion. An attack upon that person as a further conclusion isn't fallacious and may, in fact, be morally mandatory. https://plus.google.com/+StevenF…

> Ad homimen would be "people named Eric cannot be trusted".

Since you actually wrote this sentence 9 hours ago, it is safe to infer that you really don't know anything about logical fallacies or what you're talking about in general, since you can't possibly have learned all you need to know about them in 9 hours. Given this level of confidence in something that is both wrong and easily checked, why should we trust any of your claims at all?

Or... should we trust you? But not ESR? Would that not be hypocrisy?

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#235

Post by AdieuToLogic »

vmsisbetter wrote: post #27
jokoon wrote: post #13

This should be taught in any programming class. > Rule of Diversity: Distrust all claims for “one true way”. Although, does the python rule "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it." contradict this one ? > Rule 5. Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are ce…

Rob Pike doesn't know Smalltalk, Self, or Common Lisp/CLOS--why should you care what his opinions are concerning OO as a paradigm?

That's magically elitist!

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#236

Post by spopejoy »

munificent wrote: post #212
ajross wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in some cases, this philosophy has resulted in the "tangled mess held together by duct tape" kind of systems architecture that no one dares to touch for fear of breaking things. Pretty much, just as Booch's philosophy has given us tangled messes of class hierarchies with cross references pointed every which way. And just as The Gang of Four gave us AbstractedTangleMessFactorySingleton. The distinction with the Unix…

> And just as The Gang of Four gave us AbstractedTangleMessFactorySingleton. The Gang of Four didn't give us that. An army of OOP novices who were overwhelmed by all of the new choices and only skimmed Design Patterns gave us that. If you actually read the book (which surprisingly few people have, given the number of people who have strong opinions about it), you'll see the Gang of Four are actually quite clear on th…

They did, though, kind of.

The GUI-oriented 90's vibe, meaning zero examples that anybody would ever bother learning. The bizarre stuff nobody ever uses (Flyweight? Bridge?). Singleton -- 'nuff said.

You're left with what, maybe three usable patterns? Factory, which favors opaque, magical return-type polymorphism. Visitor, which is a solution in search of a problem, and also gets confused with trivial tree-walking operations. Interface, which rocks, and became part of Java, but really just shows how much inheritance sucks.

The resulting confusion is the proud sponsor of an AbstractStrategyFactoryBuilderDelegate near you.

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#237

Post by dredmorbius »

yeahdude wrote: post #234
dredmorbius wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose the fallacy is where the attributes are irrelevant to the argument. There's a somewhat related comment I'd seen recently which I've found useful: Nota bene: a fallacious ad hominem only occurs when an accusation against the person serves as a premise to the conclusion. An attack upon that person as a further conclusion isn't fallacious and may, in fact, be morally mandatory. https://plus.google.com/+StevenF…

> Ad homimen would be "people named Eric cannot be trusted". Since you actually wrote this sentence 9 hours ago, it is safe to infer that you really don't know anything about logical fallacies or what you're talking about in general, since you can't possibly have learned all you need to know about them in 9 hours. Given this level of confidence in something that is both wrong and easily checked, why should we trust a…

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html

"An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument."

http://www.skepdic.com/adhominem.html

"Ad hominem is Latin for "to the man." The ad hominem fallacy occurs when one asserts that somebody's claim is wrong because of something about the person making the claim. The ad hominem fallacy is often confused with the legitimate provision of evidence that a person is not to be trusted. Calling into question the reliability of a witness is relevant when the issue is whether to trust the witness. It is irrelevant, however, to call into question the reliability or morality or anything else about a person when the issue is whether that person's reasons for making a claim are good enough reasons to support the claim."

http://www.logicalfallacies.info/relevance/ad-hominem/

"It is important to note that the label “ad hominem” is ambiguous, and that not every kind of ad hominem argument is fallacious. In one sense, an ad hominem argument is an argument in which you offer premises that you the arguer don’t accept, but which you know the listener does accept, in order to show that his position is incoherent (as in, for example, the Euthyphro dilemma). There is nothing wrong with this type of argument ad hominem."

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

"An ad hominem attack is not quite as weak as mere name-calling. It might actually carry some weight. For example, if a senator wrote an article saying senators' salaries should be increased, one could respond:

"Of course he would say that. He's a senator.

"This wouldn't refute the author's argument, but it may at least be relevant to the case."

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#238

Post by contingencies »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #128
justwannasing wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying you disagree with the use of subroutines, functions and interfaces? After all, they are essentially small programs that do one thing and do it well.

No, I don't disagree with the use of functions or interfaces at all, but functions in particular are a programming language construct and as such not easily extended across programming languages, processes and networks, mostly due to different type systems and error states. I think it's not an accident or historical vestige that Unix philosophy uses the word "program". It has technical as well as social implications…

Functions in particular are a programming language construct and as such not easily extended across programming languages, processes and networks, mostly due to different type systems and error states [...] it's not an accident or historical vestige that Unix philosophy uses the word "program". It has technical as well as social implications that have barely changed in the past 50 years.

Insightful.

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#239

Post by contingencies »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #32

I keep wondering about what seems to be the most important component of Unix philosophy: write many small programs that do one thing well and interface using text streams! Yes, modularity is important. However, in some cases, this philosophy has resulted in the "tangled mess held together by duct tape" kind of systems architecture that no one dares to touch for fear of breaking things. I think Unix philosophy is stru…

Unix philosophy is a good place to start but needs a refresh in light of a couple of decades worth of experience.

It's always going to be a good place to start because it embodies a realistic, documented, proven and actionable compromise between engineering purity (the "formal guarantees" you describe) and just shipping something.

For a collection of related thoughts, not limited to traditional unix philosophy but still unix philosophy-centric, check out my ansified fortune clone @ https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#240

Post by justwannasing »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #128
justwannasing wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying you disagree with the use of subroutines, functions and interfaces? After all, they are essentially small programs that do one thing and do it well.

No, I don't disagree with the use of functions or interfaces at all, but functions in particular are a programming language construct and as such not easily extended across programming languages, processes and networks, mostly due to different type systems and error states. I think it's not an accident or historical vestige that Unix philosophy uses the word "program". It has technical as well as social implications…

Then I think you are confused or inexperienced because Unix does not treat everything as a text stream and you say functions in a programming language are different so they are better is not a wise statement. It appears you don't understand the fundamental concept and think Unix hasn't improved over the years.
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