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> The problem is that this is a whole lot of cargo cult. It does have the efficient parts, but it also has a lot of accumulated cruft, archaic limitations, arb

> The problem is that this is a whole lot of cargo cult. It does have the efficient parts, but it also has a lot of accumulated cruft, archaic limitations, arbitrariness, and plain bad decisions. I don't think the problem is cargo culting. Replacing things with better solutions is hard. Take the venerable ANSI terminal. It's archaic and cryptic, I think most people would agree on that. Yet proposing a better, widely useful and backwards compatible alternative is extremely hard. Which is why no one has succeeded yet. There is still a lot of innovation, though. 10 years ago, we didn't have git, or ag, or autojump. Gdb has improved A LOT in the past few years, even if it's not immediately obvious when you open it.

faho 10y ago
>I don't think the problem is cargo culting. Replacing things with better solutions is hard. Take the venerable ANSI terminal. It's archaic and cryptic, I think most people would agree on that. Yet proposing a better, widely useful and backwards compatible alternative is extremely hard. Which is why no one has succeeded yet. Making a better alternative isn't hard. Getting everyone to use it is.
- joemi 10y ago
  I forget where I read this, but someone once talked about how a new standard can't just be "better". Instead it has to be _a lot_ better and probably even bring a lot of really good new stuff to the table, otherwise not enough people will bother switching to it.
beachstartup 10y ago
> Yet proposing a better, widely useful and backwards compatible alternative is extremely hard. we keep inventing new stuff, but always end up just using it to emulate and display terminals in new and interesting ways. even my new, shiny 4G LTE + iOS + touchscreen mobile device is used to run a terminal emulator over ssh half the time. i've even use its web browser to run a web RDP session .. to display a terminal console. i think there's just something soothing about a screen full of text. it's a very efficient way of displaying information.
- blakeyrat 10y ago
  Only certain types of information. It's not a great way to display, for example, a comparison between two similarly-edited movie trailers. Or a map of Bremen. Or the annotations on your 2016 second quarter financial sum-up spreadsheet. The big problem with the entire Unix philosophy is that it assumes all important data is text, when in the real world very little of it is. If you're one of the few people who can get away with text-based everything, it's great. If you're the vast majority of the population, it's a terrible idea.
  - beachstartup 10y ago
    this is HN, so i was talking only about systems admin and nuts-and-bolts development, but i would also argue that in all of your examples, having a terminal in addition to the other display formats would help convey more information as well as offer a better command interface. a good example would be autocad which has the drawing window but also a powerful terminal (i believe it was lisp-based) that you used in parallel.
  - Koshkin 10y ago
    > it assumes True, UNIX was designed, in part, to make the processing of textual data as easy as possible. It was never intended to be running inside a photo camera or a drawing pad. On the other hand, from the very beginning UNIX was just as capable of processing binary data as well as controlling various devices, such as typesetters and graphical displays as any other reasonably powerful OS of the time.
blakeyrat 10y ago
Git is just repeating all the same mistakes all over again, just when it looked like things were starting to maybe get a bit better. I'm amazed you're citing that as a positive example.
- haldean 10y ago
  If you're going to hate on something almost universally respected, you're going to have to explain yourself.
  - blakeyrat 10y ago
    Git was made in, what, 2005. We knew about discoverability then. We knew about accessibility then. We knew about user testing, about UX. Git makes use of zero of those concepts. In fact, it seems to be actively hostile towards its users^. We also had source control packages that were not only easier to use, but had more features: TFS let you put a lock on files that don't merge well, for example. Both TFS and Subversion allowed you to check-out only small portions of the repository. Git has some nice things. It's generally fast, for example. It allows developers to work offline. But when the developer community apparently unilaterally chose to adopt it, we threw away a lot of good stuff, let's not forget that. I'd also question that Git is "universally respected". I've worked with a great many programmers who found it just as unpleasant and unfriendly as I do. The reason people use Git is because other developers demand it as a condition of employment, not because it's enjoyable. In that respect, it's in the same class of application as, say, OracleApps or Lotus Notes. --- ^ Yes, someone's going to come in here and say, "well it's a professional tool for professionals therefore it's ok that it's difficult to use and hostile and not accessibility to people who can't use a CLI due to physical limitations because it's a professional tool for professionals. Well. Sony Vegas is a professional tool for professionals, and somehow it doesn't have even remotely the amount of usability problems Git does. So is Adobe Photoshop. So I don't buy that argument.
    - mixedCase 10y ago
      > Yes, someone's going to come in here and say, "well it's a professional tool for professionals therefore it's ok that it's difficult to use and hostile and not accessibility to people who can't use a CLI due to physical limitations because it's a professional tool for professionals. Oh that's nonsense. First of all, because git is a CLI application you can easily build a GUI for it, and there are a lot of them for you to choose. You can't do the reverse, and good luck integrating your tightly coupled WinForms application with other tools. Second, what "physical limitations" put people into a position where they can code but they can't use a CLI? > Sony Vegas is a professional tool for professionals, and somehow it doesn't have even remotely the amount of usability problems Git does. So is Adobe Photoshop. So I don't buy that argument. Multimedia artists are among the people who are most resistant to ever switch tools due to how much they have mentally invested into the complexities of their go-to application. Your example is far from good.

faho 10y ago

>I don't think the problem is cargo culting. Replacing things with better solutions is hard. Take the venerable ANSI terminal. It's archaic and cryptic, I think most people would agree on that. Yet proposing a better, widely useful and backwards compatible alternative is extremely hard. Which is why no one has succeeded yet. Making a better alternative isn't hard. Getting everyone to use it is.

joemi 10y ago
I forget where I read this, but someone once talked about how a new standard can't just be "better". Instead it has to be _a lot_ better and probably even bring a lot of really good new stuff to the table, otherwise not enough people will bother switching to it.

beachstartup 10y ago

> Yet proposing a better, widely useful and backwards compatible alternative is extremely hard. we keep inventing new stuff, but always end up just using it to emulate and display terminals in new and interesting ways. even my new, shiny 4G LTE + iOS + touchscreen mobile device is used to run a terminal emulator over ssh half the time. i've even use its web browser to run a web RDP session .. to display a terminal console. i think there's just something soothing about a screen full of text. it's a very efficient way of displaying information.

blakeyrat 10y ago
Only certain types of information. It's not a great way to display, for example, a comparison between two similarly-edited movie trailers. Or a map of Bremen. Or the annotations on your 2016 second quarter financial sum-up spreadsheet. The big problem with the entire Unix philosophy is that it assumes all important data is text, when in the real world very little of it is. If you're one of the few people who can get away with text-based everything, it's great. If you're the vast majority of the population, it's a terrible idea.
- beachstartup 10y ago
  this is HN, so i was talking only about systems admin and nuts-and-bolts development, but i would also argue that in all of your examples, having a terminal in addition to the other display formats would help convey more information as well as offer a better command interface. a good example would be autocad which has the drawing window but also a powerful terminal (i believe it was lisp-based) that you used in parallel.
- Koshkin 10y ago
  > it assumes True, UNIX was designed, in part, to make the processing of textual data as easy as possible. It was never intended to be running inside a photo camera or a drawing pad. On the other hand, from the very beginning UNIX was just as capable of processing binary data as well as controlling various devices, such as typesetters and graphical displays as any other reasonably powerful OS of the time.

blakeyrat 10y ago

Git is just repeating all the same mistakes all over again, just when it looked like things were starting to maybe get a bit better. I'm amazed you're citing that as a positive example.

haldean 10y ago
If you're going to hate on something almost universally respected, you're going to have to explain yourself.
- blakeyrat 10y ago
  Git was made in, what, 2005. We knew about discoverability then. We knew about accessibility then. We knew about user testing, about UX. Git makes use of zero of those concepts. In fact, it seems to be actively hostile towards its users^. We also had source control packages that were not only easier to use, but had more features: TFS let you put a lock on files that don't merge well, for example. Both TFS and Subversion allowed you to check-out only small portions of the repository. Git has some nice things. It's generally fast, for example. It allows developers to work offline. But when the developer community apparently unilaterally chose to adopt it, we threw away a lot of good stuff, let's not forget that. I'd also question that Git is "universally respected". I've worked with a great many programmers who found it just as unpleasant and unfriendly as I do. The reason people use Git is because other developers demand it as a condition of employment, not because it's enjoyable. In that respect, it's in the same class of application as, say, OracleApps or Lotus Notes. --- ^ Yes, someone's going to come in here and say, "well it's a professional tool for professionals therefore it's ok that it's difficult to use and hostile and not accessibility to people who can't use a CLI due to physical limitations because it's a professional tool for professionals. Well. Sony Vegas is a professional tool for professionals, and somehow it doesn't have even remotely the amount of usability problems Git does. So is Adobe Photoshop. So I don't buy that argument.
  - mixedCase 10y ago
    > Yes, someone's going to come in here and say, "well it's a professional tool for professionals therefore it's ok that it's difficult to use and hostile and not accessibility to people who can't use a CLI due to physical limitations because it's a professional tool for professionals. Oh that's nonsense. First of all, because git is a CLI application you can easily build a GUI for it, and there are a lot of them for you to choose. You can't do the reverse, and good luck integrating your tightly coupled WinForms application with other tools. Second, what "physical limitations" put people into a position where they can code but they can't use a CLI? > Sony Vegas is a professional tool for professionals, and somehow it doesn't have even remotely the amount of usability problems Git does. So is Adobe Photoshop. So I don't buy that argument. Multimedia artists are among the people who are most resistant to ever switch tools due to how much they have mentally invested into the complexities of their go-to application. Your example is far from good.