*nix

[ghe <ghe@slsware.net>]

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Sunday, February 16, 2020 1:52 AM, Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sb, 15 feb 20, 20:17:07, Charles Curley wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 15 Feb 2020 14:03:02 -0700
> > ghe ghe@slsware.net wrote:
> > 
> > > Until recently, the *nix communities have stuck pretty well to these
> > > recommendations -- they're just descriptions of competent programming,
> > > after all. There may be some discussion over the definitions of "one
> > > thing" and "well" but there is software in our Linux that, I think,
> > > doesn't conform to anybody's understanding of these maxims.
> > 
> > And then there are the exceptions that illustrate the rule. Emacs,

I've never had the pleasure of Emacs. Stallman wrote Emacs just to prove that Lisp, with serious modification, can be made to do useful work :-) 

> > LibreOffice, 

LO is several programs that each do a somewhat specific job. But there might be room for some discussion of 'one thing' in there. They do work pretty well, in my experience. Eventually.

> > and systemd

...

> If you truly believe in this principle without any exception throw away
> your Swiss army knife / Leatherman now.

OK.

Complexity of the software is for us programmers to deal with. Making the programs useful for a user can be one of the problems in our writing and design. That, I think, is what they meant by "One program doing the job well" -- users have a collection of reasonably straightforward and simple tools to do things, and the tools work. The screwdrivers and cork screws and knife blades can be piped together, you know. Or called in a script.

OTOH, I haven't heard of anybody having figured out how to pipe GUI stuff.


-- 
Glenn English