8 ms·

This and the post by silentbicycle above [1] make the point that GNOME abandoned the Unix philosophy to provide a more Windows-style monolithic GUI program. [1

This and the post by silentbicycle above [1] make the point that GNOME abandoned the Unix philosophy to provide a more Windows-style monolithic GUI program. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1059853 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1059853

silentbicycle 17y ago
It isn't even about GNOME and GUIs, but things like this (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1037509 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1037509). You don't need to add an "overwrite in-place" option to sed when you can add it to everything by making it its own command. Unix design concerns how functionality is factored at the level between programs, not just between objects in a program. See "cat -v considered harmful" (http://gaul.org/files/cat_-v_considered_harmful.html http://gaul.org/files/cat_-v_considered_harmful.html). GNU just does bloat bigger and better. (Compare BSD make and GNU make, for starters.)
- philh 17y ago
  There are advantages to having overwrite-in-place as an option. If sed is passed a malformed expression, or for whatever reason is unable to operate, the file is untouched. A separate program would clobber it. Better to have the separate program than everything to implement its own version, but having both isn't necessarily bad.
  - silentbicycle 17y ago
    > A separate program would clobber it. Nope, you can check the return value from the program(s) run inside of it and revert to the backup file if there's a problem. You really don't need it to be handled specifically by sed. There's actually an example script that does exactly that in _The Unix Programming Environment_, called 'overwrite', on page 154.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
wendroid 17y ago
After the introduction of Windows 95, it was clear that the free software universe was lacking a number of technologies and that we were lagging behind in various areas. At Microsoft I learned the truth about ActiveX and COM and I got very interested in it inmediately [sic]. Upon my return to Mexico Federico and I started to design a GUI control infrastructure for Unix that we code named `GNOME'. "The Story of the GNOME project" http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/gnome-history.html http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/gnome-history.html or "How one man ruined everything"
- bitwize 17y ago
  "In a world of small programs that did one thing well and communicated via text-based protocols... One man sought to challenge the system."
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - wendroid 17y ago
    Unix is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity. - Dennis Ritchie The X server has to be the biggest program I've ever seen that doesn't do anything for you. - ken

silentbicycle 17y ago

It isn't even about GNOME and GUIs, but things like this (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1037509 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1037509). You don't need to add an "overwrite in-place" option to sed when you can add it to everything by making it its own command. Unix design concerns how functionality is factored at the level between programs, not just between objects in a program. See "cat -v considered harmful" (http://gaul.org/files/cat_-v_considered_harmful.html http://gaul.org/files/cat_-v_considered_harmful.html). GNU just does bloat bigger and better. (Compare BSD make and GNU make, for starters.)

philh 17y ago
There are advantages to having overwrite-in-place as an option. If sed is passed a malformed expression, or for whatever reason is unable to operate, the file is untouched. A separate program would clobber it. Better to have the separate program than everything to implement its own version, but having both isn't necessarily bad.
- silentbicycle 17y ago
  > A separate program would clobber it. Nope, you can check the return value from the program(s) run inside of it and revert to the backup file if there's a problem. You really don't need it to be handled specifically by sed. There's actually an example script that does exactly that in _The Unix Programming Environment_, called 'overwrite', on page 154.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]

wendroid 17y ago

After the introduction of Windows 95, it was clear that the free software universe was lacking a number of technologies and that we were lagging behind in various areas. At Microsoft I learned the truth about ActiveX and COM and I got very interested in it inmediately [sic]. Upon my return to Mexico Federico and I started to design a GUI control infrastructure for Unix that we code named `GNOME'. "The Story of the GNOME project" http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/gnome-history.html http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/gnome-history.html or "How one man ruined everything"

bitwize 17y ago
"In a world of small programs that did one thing well and communicated via text-based protocols... One man sought to challenge the system."
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- wendroid 17y ago
  Unix is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity. - Dennis Ritchie The X server has to be the biggest program I've ever seen that doesn't do anything for you. - ken