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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 somet

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.

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.