> Joe wrote:
> > There was a time when 'software' and 'applications' were two different
> > and distinct things, when applications were user programs and software
> > was the set of programs that made the computer work, today called system
> > software. A computer as delivered contained both hardware and software,
> > and it was up to the owner to write the applications. OK, that's going
> > back a bit...
>
>
> Once upon a time there were programmers. Frequently they had to
> build the hardware that they programmed -- indeed, it was a bit
> of a luxury to only be a programmer, and not also have
> responsibility for hardware maintenance (or design).
>
> Then there were systems programmers and application programmers.
> Systems programmers wrote operating systems and utilities for
> them. Applications programmers wrote applications. There was a lot of crossover.
>
> Then there were operators, systems programmers and application
> programmers. Operator was a junior position that did physical
> things (mount tapes, plug in cables) and ran commands to do
> things on the systems. They usually moved up to being --
>
> Systems administrators, who did some programming in service to
> the systems, but not too much. The more senior a sysadmin was,
> the more time they spent programming and the less time they
> spent doing physical things, unless they wanted to do that.
>
> Sysadmins started to specialize. People who configured switches
> and routers and talked to telephone companies became
> "network engineers". People who spent time working on
> firewalls and security policies and thinking about that became
> "security engineers". Junior people who read scripts to
> end users became the helpdesk. And so forth.
>
> Then we noticed that a bunch of people were doing things
> manually when they should be automated. This was especially bad
> in places where there were no senior sysadmins or systems
> programmers. But we did have the internet, and senior sysadmins
> got together and started writing tools to make their lives
> easier: infrastructure automation. Current tools for that
> include chef, puppet, ansible, salt...
>
> (all of this is largely quoting myself circa April 2016)
>
> -dsr-
Wow, it is very impressive how things evolve.
Since this thread is about this filesystem hierarchy debate,
I would like to add this post I just read:
http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html
Looks like Wikipedia is right: many years ago, /usr meant "user", and there was no /home