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The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy

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Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy

#611

Post by cassowary »

richard_todd wrote: post #331
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…

On the other hand, the record player he first heard David Cassidy on will still work in the next house he buys. That's because, once we settle on foundational stuff like electricity delivery, we don't break it every time we have good ideas about it. It's the same with everything, like math or computer hardware: after a period of diverse experiments, the foundations solidify and we build immense structures on top of t…

I think WordPress, wikis and Google (Docs) would disagree with you about word processing being a solved problem. And they seem to do well enough. They offer a fundamentally different notion of what you're trying to do when you're putting prose down. (Personally I hate these systems like Microsoft Word and Google Docs that force you to think in terms of a page. Especially because they don't give you any tools to actually make things lay out properly. But it's okay, because people have been fundamentally rethinking the issue for years now.)

Now if you do want page layout, I think the people who like to do that use something different — not Word. So I don't think they've really cornered any market, unless the market is people who want to use Word.

Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy

#612

Post by yellowapple »

jstimpfle wrote: post #585
yellowapple wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike "as binary" or "as a big integer", a tree is structured. "As an arbitrarily-formatted string" would be much closer to those two comparison points.

If you think strings (or "binary") are "unstructured", think again. (Start with: what does that even mean?)

I don't think they're unstructured; rather, I know they're arbitrarily structured, usually requiring a great deal of ad-hockery to deal with them. A standard structure means a lot less work for data consumers and producers alike.

This comment is structured in the sense that it's two paragraphs of more-or-less-correct English. That doesn't make it useful to tools that don't understand English. As far as a tool like 'rm' is concerned, it might as well be unstructured.

Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy

#613

Post by cassowary »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #283
zzzcpan wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But no, in both the worlds of programming and operating systems, there already were better thought-out solutions." There were differently thought-out solutions, but not necessarily better or worse. Perhaps the issues they thought out didn't matter as much at the time and very unlikely to matter even a little bit today, and who knows how much they got wrong and much worse. It's very hard to speculate. But one thing I…

Sure, but we're not talking about niche systems. There was a whole flourishing world of computing before Unix and C came to be. In fact, a lot of significant theoretical and practical advancements came from that age. Our industry does seem to be stuck in circles, continuously forgetting the ideas of past cycles and reinventing them, only for them to be forgotten again. To see that phenomenon in action, one does not h…

I don't think that's a fair characterisation of Javascript development. It's more that people gradually realised they want to do more and more. But when they've finally understood what they want to do, they quickly adopt learning from elsewhere. A lot of the latest and greatest developments (like React and Redux) are directly inspired by theoretical work.

Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy

#614

Post by geezerjay »

atombender wrote: post #583
geezerjay wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's why we have both "ls" and "find" I don't get what you're trying to say. "ls" lists files in a specific path while "find" searches for objects in a file system that match a specific query. Are you sure you're not confused and somehow assuming that "does just one thing well" should mean "another tool must not accomplish anything that might be remotely achievable by misusing another tool"?

Both "ls" and "find" "list files in a specific path" and "search for objects that match a specific query". There's total overlap. The difference is that "ls" is a presentation-oriented tool, whereas "find" is geared towards pipelines.

> Both "ls" and "find" "list files in a specific path"

Only if you use "find" with a query that means "get me all files matching any and all criteria as long as they are in this specific path".

That's a corner case, and a very silly one.

> There's total overlap.

A very silly and far-fetched one.

Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy

#615

Post by webmaven »

int_19h wrote: post #597
webmaven wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Are those filenames used in contexts where homographs could be more than a minor annoyance?

I guess? If a malicious attacker could gain access to my FS and create homographs, figuring out which is which while browsing the filesystem would be non-trivial. But I find it an unlikely attack vector to begin with. The main concern with homographs is in URLs and other external resources.

I guess I am thinking of contexts like uploaded files, or shared network drives.

Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy

#616

Post by duncan_bayne »

Arizhel wrote: post #607
duncan_bayne wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're uncharitably mis-reading my post, and being quite hostile in your reply. What I meant was that - in hindsight - the fact that it had some beneficial function like restoring GI function should have been obvious, because otherwise, it would have been selected away. That is, even a layperson _should_ have looked at the situation and thought "I bet it does something for us". But that's the benefit of hindsight; mo…

Sorry, you're right, I misread your post. I think you have a good point here, but to be fair I don't think people weren't thinking in evolutionary terms at all. Not everything in our (or other animals') bodies are actually there for a good reason now. I'll give you one good example: horse toes. I don't remember the exact term now, but horses equine ancestors used to have multiple toes, like us and many other mammals.…

Agreed almost entirely - and I apologise for uncharitably calling your reading uncharitable :)

I think there is a subtle difference between the appendix and the horse toe, though: the appendix regularly kills people due to appendicitis. I _think_ that ought to have been a clue. Unsure though as it's not really my field.

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