6 ms·

> It's often a stupid rule. By the way, I haven't down-voted you, but I think I understand why others did. Before calling stupid a pillar of a (programming) ph

by pif 10y ago

> It's often a stupid rule. By the way, I haven't down-voted you, but I think I understand why others did. Before calling stupid a pillar of a (programming) philosophy with decades of useful outcomes, you should stop and ask yourself whether it's just a matter of taste on your side or, even more likely, of ignorance.

bjourne 10y ago
But there is a limit to much respect you should pay to your elders. UNIX was invented over ten computer generations ago, and it's inventors couldn't possibly have imagined the world we live in today. And given that Windows is the dominant desktop OS, not Linux, the "decades of useful outcomes" favors my argument so I don't know who is the ignorant one.
- pif 10y ago
  > Windows is the dominant desktop OS So what? Is desktop computing all that matters? Networking, scientific computing, mobile telephone, don't they matter? Unix was never meant for looking magic to clueless users; it was meant for programmers, i.e. for people who use the computer and not just some programs written by other people. And, in its realm, it has been brilliant! Not perfect, but very good! By the way, here's a link to learn something more: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/
  - eeZah7Ux 10y ago
    On top of that, UNIX shell tools knowledge is not more required for casual desktop users (see Ubuntu) than batch files under windows.
  - bjourne 10y ago
    UNIX isn't dominant in the areas you mention now either (no, Android isn't UNIX). It has a niche among free software users and in networking devices but it is not common in other areas. I.e. your "decades of useful outcomes" argument doesn't favor the point you are making because the opposite philosophy (a more verbose userland) has many times more "useful outcomes". Therefore, according to your own logic (which I don't subscribe to because I think popularity is a useless measure of sound design) you "should stop and ask yourself whether it's just a matter of taste on your side or, even more likely, of ignorance."
- JdeBP 10y ago
  > its inventors couldn't possibly have imagined the world we live in today ... except that they could and did. People were not lacking in imagination. A science fiction writer imagined the Internet-connected smart 'phone in 1976, and put it into a science fiction novel (calling it the "mini-sec") titled Imperial Earth. A decade before that, an engineer imagined windows, hypertext, the mouse, word processing, graphics, and video conferencing, and gave what was later called The Mother of All Demos in an ACM/IEEE conference in 1968.
michrassena 10y ago
I think it's great that someone is questioning the way things have always been done, even it's just by calling it stupid. The hard part is coming up with something better. Unix at its core is still a product of the computing environment of the early 1970s. Not only that, it was a reaction to the complexity of Multics. What gave Unix an advantage at the time was how relatively easy it was to port to other architectures and how few resources it required. Universities and businesses could run it on cheap $50,000 minicomputers. It eventually outgrew a lot of its origins, but still. The rule of silence makes the most sense on a slow terminal or a teletype. Verbosity is wasteful and time-consuming in that environment.
- eeZah7Ux 10y ago
  Verbosity is wasteful and time-consuming in today's environment as well. Most people on HN are developers and not as fluent as system engineers in shells and UNIX tools. The need for minimalist, "silent" UIs comes with fluency. This is also true for network engineers and database administrators.
  - pif 10y ago
    > The need for minimalist, "silent" UIs comes with fluency. No, it comes from wanting to reuse the tool! Would you like your browser to open plenty of pop-ups with messages like "Congratulations! The font XYZ was successfully loaded from C:\foo\bar" or "That's incredible! I looked for a JPEG on server www.qqq.com ... and it was there!"? No, you wouldn't. And I wouldn't like "mv" to babble every time it renames a file on the hard disk.
- pif 10y ago
  > I think it's great that someone is questioning the way things have always been done, If you've taken the time to understand why generations of professional have done that way, and if you you have something else to propose, than the discussion is welcome and the result will be interesting in every case. Otherwise, it's just a waste of time.

by pif 10y ago

bjourne 10y ago

But there is a limit to much respect you should pay to your elders. UNIX was invented over ten computer generations ago, and it's inventors couldn't possibly have imagined the world we live in today. And given that Windows is the dominant desktop OS, not Linux, the "decades of useful outcomes" favors my argument so I don't know who is the ignorant one.

pif 10y ago
> Windows is the dominant desktop OS So what? Is desktop computing all that matters? Networking, scientific computing, mobile telephone, don't they matter? Unix was never meant for looking magic to clueless users; it was meant for programmers, i.e. for people who use the computer and not just some programs written by other people. And, in its realm, it has been brilliant! Not perfect, but very good! By the way, here's a link to learn something more: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/
- eeZah7Ux 10y ago
  On top of that, UNIX shell tools knowledge is not more required for casual desktop users (see Ubuntu) than batch files under windows.
- bjourne 10y ago
  UNIX isn't dominant in the areas you mention now either (no, Android isn't UNIX). It has a niche among free software users and in networking devices but it is not common in other areas. I.e. your "decades of useful outcomes" argument doesn't favor the point you are making because the opposite philosophy (a more verbose userland) has many times more "useful outcomes". Therefore, according to your own logic (which I don't subscribe to because I think popularity is a useless measure of sound design) you "should stop and ask yourself whether it's just a matter of taste on your side or, even more likely, of ignorance."
JdeBP 10y ago
> its inventors couldn't possibly have imagined the world we live in today ... except that they could and did. People were not lacking in imagination. A science fiction writer imagined the Internet-connected smart 'phone in 1976, and put it into a science fiction novel (calling it the "mini-sec") titled Imperial Earth. A decade before that, an engineer imagined windows, hypertext, the mouse, word processing, graphics, and video conferencing, and gave what was later called The Mother of All Demos in an ACM/IEEE conference in 1968.

michrassena 10y ago

I think it's great that someone is questioning the way things have always been done, even it's just by calling it stupid. The hard part is coming up with something better. Unix at its core is still a product of the computing environment of the early 1970s. Not only that, it was a reaction to the complexity of Multics. What gave Unix an advantage at the time was how relatively easy it was to port to other architectures and how few resources it required. Universities and businesses could run it on cheap $50,000 minicomputers. It eventually outgrew a lot of its origins, but still. The rule of silence makes the most sense on a slow terminal or a teletype. Verbosity is wasteful and time-consuming in that environment.

eeZah7Ux 10y ago
Verbosity is wasteful and time-consuming in today's environment as well. Most people on HN are developers and not as fluent as system engineers in shells and UNIX tools. The need for minimalist, "silent" UIs comes with fluency. This is also true for network engineers and database administrators.
- pif 10y ago
  > The need for minimalist, "silent" UIs comes with fluency. No, it comes from wanting to reuse the tool! Would you like your browser to open plenty of pop-ups with messages like "Congratulations! The font XYZ was successfully loaded from C:\foo\bar" or "That's incredible! I looked for a JPEG on server www.qqq.com ... and it was there!"? No, you wouldn't. And I wouldn't like "mv" to babble every time it renames a file on the hard disk.
pif 10y ago
> I think it's great that someone is questioning the way things have always been done, If you've taken the time to understand why generations of professional have done that way, and if you you have something else to propose, than the discussion is welcome and the result will be interesting in every case. Otherwise, it's just a waste of time.