The Unix Philosophy • Hacker News Board

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#61

Post by davidgerard » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 12:24 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #47

TeMPOraL wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of these seem even remotely relevant to engineering. Moreover, research, discovery and innovation requires letting people having freedom to think. That includes holding unpopular, controversial or politically incorrect opinions. We are so worried about Evil Government dictating what we can and cannot think that we haven't noticed the current organic trend to prosecute every other person for thoughtcrimes. It's n…

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…

I continue to take everything ESR says about technology seriously. His opinions on everything else ... are an instructive example in the non-transferable nature of expertise.

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#62

Post by arethuza » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 12:32 PM UTC

grymoire1 wrote: post #58

jkot wrote: post #22

How debacles such as micro-kernels and XServer fits into Unix Philosophy?

Sun had the NeWS windowing system before XWindows. Be glad that did not become the standard. Be very glad.

I rather liked NeWS - certainly it was a lot more fun to develop for at that time than X and had some wonderful UI toolkits (particularly HyperNeWS).

For example, being able to draw a shape in a a graphical editor and then paste the shape directly to a window as the shape that window should take was rather cool - and this was in the early 90s!

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#63

Post by saw-lau » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 12:33 PM UTC

Haul4ss wrote: post #46

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's pro 'gun-rights'.

What's wrong with this? Being completely serious here, what is wrong with citizens owning firearms? I am all about reducing gun violence, but if you want to do that you have to do something to stem the tide of illegally acquired handguns in areas of concentrated poverty. That's where a lot of your gun violence comes from. The recent happenings in Charleston are unicorns. Unpredictable and very rare events that you ca…

http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-...

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#64

Post by bcg1 » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 12:34 PM UTC

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #2

People will hang shit on ESR, but The Art of Unix Programming is one of my all time favourite books. If you haven't read it, even if you're not a *nix developer, do yourself a favour and just skim the table of contents... something may pique your interest and you may learn a thing or two. It's also free online: http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/

Chapters 1 and 2 (Philosophy and History) are required reading for all junior devs and aspiring hackers.

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#65

Post by twoodfin » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 12:34 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #47

TeMPOraL wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of these seem even remotely relevant to engineering. Moreover, research, discovery and innovation requires letting people having freedom to think. That includes holding unpopular, controversial or politically incorrect opinions. We are so worried about Evil Government dictating what we can and cannot think that we haven't noticed the current organic trend to prosecute every other person for thoughtcrimes. It's n…

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 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 frames which no longer fit.

"Engineering validity"? This is just a dressed up ad hominem. If some technical argument ESR has made is inconsistent or doesn't match up with empirical evidence, criticize away, but his positions on what exactly the Second Amendment means or what the best role of government is can't possibly inform that criticism. It could, perhaps, explain why he's made an error, but it can't identify the error for us.

ESR's political views call much of his work into question.

Which questions about what work? If you're going to cast aspersions like this, you'd probably best be specific.

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#66

Post by philh » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 12:35 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #47

TeMPOraL wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of these seem even remotely relevant to engineering. Moreover, research, discovery and innovation requires letting people having freedom to think. That includes holding unpopular, controversial or politically incorrect opinions. We are so worried about Evil Government dictating what we can and cannot think that we haven't noticed the current organic trend to prosecute every other person for thoughtcrimes. It's n…

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?

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#67

Post by bcg1 » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 12:37 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #47

TeMPOraL wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of these seem even remotely relevant to engineering. Moreover, research, discovery and innovation requires letting people having freedom to think. That includes holding unpopular, controversial or politically incorrect opinions. We are so worried about Evil Government dictating what we can and cannot think that we haven't noticed the current organic trend to prosecute every other person for thoughtcrimes. It's n…

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…

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#68

Post by agumonkey » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 12:38 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #50

> Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new features. Which means that no program is more un-UNIX-y than Emacs...

Because Emacs is a system of its own, the Lisp Machine legacy leaked too much. Inside of emacs many things are tiny components, after all it's a lisp, which had a stronger unixy feel than so many things since. I mean lambda, compose, map... hard to separate concerns more than that.

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#69

Post by Haul4ss » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 12:46 PM UTC

saw-lau wrote: post #63

Haul4ss wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with this? Being completely serious here, what is wrong with citizens owning firearms? I am all about reducing gun violence, but if you want to do that you have to do something to stem the tide of illegally acquired handguns in areas of concentrated poverty. That's where a lot of your gun violence comes from. The recent happenings in Charleston are unicorns. Unpredictable and very rare events that you ca…

http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-...

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/copenhagen-cafe-attack-free-spee...

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

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

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#70

Post by cousin_it » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 12:50 PM UTC

justwannasing wrote: post #52

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…

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.

Note the part about text streams in fauigerzigerk's comment. If all functions were limited to accepting a text stream and returning a text stream, the overall program would quickly become a ball of mud.