The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy
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The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy
1–10 of 616 posts
Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy
#2"Have you ever kissed a girl?"
Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy
#3For those of you who might be fooled into thinking this is about things like SystemD and Docker—it's not!
Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy
#4Sounds like the author needs to read Worse Is Better (https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html).
Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy
#5I think the problem is that Linux developers started abusing the Unix Philosophy to the point that you had to know about a lot of different programs in order to be productive - Sometimes, it's much more convenient if one program can do everything that you want it to do out of the box (it requires less understanding of the system).
The Unix philosophy is essentially the opposite of the Apple philosophy. It gives you flexibility and composability at the cost of simplicity and the overall experience.
The optimal solution tends to be somewhere in-between. If you look at Linux, it's actually a monolithic system (which goes against the Unix philosophy); the popularity of Linux is in itself proof that people do want a single cohesive product - If the Unix philosophy was the best approach, we'd all be using Minix by now.
Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy
#6For those of you who might be fooled into thinking this is about things like SystemD and Docker—it's not!
More a reprise of the _Unix Hater's Handbook_ with a slightly different gloss, for those who remember that.
Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy
#7"Have you ever kissed a girl?"
Exactly. Waayyy TMII (irrelevant).
If the bottom-up compositional model for computing that largely originated with Unix is fading, this article doesn't go there, or suggest cause.
Now, that's an article I'd like to read...
Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy
#8Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy
#9I think the problem is that Linux developers started abusing the Unix Philosophy to the point that you had to know about a lot of different programs in order to be productive - Sometimes, it's much more convenient if one program can do everything that you want it to do out of the box (it requires less understanding of the system). The Unix philosophy is essentially the opposite of the Apple philosophy. It gives you f…
I didn't find MacOS to be any simpler than newbie-oriented Linux distros like Mint and Ubuntu. It was just filled with a ton of proprietary, bastardized, closed-source garbage and limits that made it more difficult for power users to understand and effectively manage the system.
Re: The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy
#10Everyone 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 are either running Windows or a Unix-like system, it has set up a dichotomy in people's minds. When the Unix-Haters Handbook was released, there were still other operating systems which could have a plausible claim to being better, but they have all faded away, leaving only these two. And since the "Real Hackers" prefer Unix, Unix and all its decisions must be the right ones.
Unix is great, but people need to be more realistic about its shortcomings instead of mindlessly repeating mantras about "The Unix Way" without critical examination.