4 ms·

I'm not sure you actually understand my position, which has nothing to do with which philosophy is "right" or "better", but, rather, that the one you seem to ob

by mmt 8y ago

I'm not sure you actually understand my position, which has nothing to do with which philosophy is "right" or "better", but, rather, that the one you seem to object to so strenuously on moral grounds, both existed and was a valid engineering consideration/strategy at the time. To falsify it, you would merely need documentation that such a philosophy was not a consideration in this design. If it's falsified, then there may well be something new to be learned about design and mistakes to be avoided. Otherwise, it's just another example of "Worse Is Better" and isn't worth the effort.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
> both existed and was a valid engineering consideration/strategy at the time. Please define what you mean by "valid". > To falsify it, you would merely need documentation that such a philosophy was not a consideration in this design. Well, then I probably don't care? I care whether it was a bad idea, not whether it was a bad idea coming from a bad philosophy or a bad idea standing on its own.
- mmt 8y ago
  > Well, then I probably don't care? I care whether it was a bad idea, not whether it was a bad idea coming from a bad philosophy or a bad idea standing on its own. If your goal is to prevent such a "bad idea" in the future, then not caring could easily work against you. You'd end up having to expend energy challenging each bad idea on its own, possibly failing even to make inroads because there's a bad philosophy that makes it seem like a good idea (maybe even obviously so, rendering your challenge easily dismissed and a wasted effort). Instead, if you focus your energy on challenging the bad philosophy, you both get to the heart of the matter right away, and you cover all the new bad ideas it enables all at once (and even ahead of time). You also won't have to start from scratch, as the philosophy, unlike every new bad idea, isn't unique, and there's likely plenty of literature out there already that you can use as ammunition.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
    Well, yeah, of course I care. But not for the determination of whether a bad idea is bad. This may be an instance of worse is better, but it is a bad idea regardless, and thus at best an additional piece of evidence against the philosophy.
Dylan16807 8y ago
A hacky implementation can be simultaneously good enough for some users and also completely unacceptable for a standard. It's not worse than nothing, sure. If you use it exactly as expected, and only have one logical user of a file in each process, it does an acceptable job. But in the context of what it's supposed to do, be a generic locking mechanism, it's horrifically broken. So I'll summarize this way: It's completely okay that they wrote this code, as a "version 0.2". But there's no excuse for presenting it as finished code, with reasonable semantics. It's not hyperbole to say that.
- mmt 8y ago
  > also completely unacceptable for a standard. [...] > It's completely okay that they wrote this code, as a "version 0.2". But there's no excuse for presenting it as finished code, with reasonable semantics. It's not hyperbole to say that. Am I missing something, or are you just saying "Worse is Worse"? The "excuse" is that this way (arguably, perhaps) governed the history of Unix development, well before there was even a standard. What I've been attempting to get people (especially ones with the seemingly most strenuous invectives toward the design) is to perform the thought experiment of placing themselves in the "shoes" of the designers, both by trying to imagine being in that past and, much harder, actually believing in that philosophy. I believe that will go much farther in increasing understand and, to borrow from the HN guidelines, gratify intellectual curiosity, than arguing against strawmen (or just non-existent proponents) of design goodness.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    > Am I missing something, or are you just saying "Worse is Worse"? No, I'm not. It's fine that they made that code, and were using it. But different situations have different requirements. I'm not objecting to the design work at all. I'm objecting to the idea of calling it "ready to standardize". This is a presentation problem, not a development problem. It was half-baked, and shouldn't have been set in stone until it was fully baked.
    - mmt 8y ago

by mmt 8y ago

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago

> both existed and was a valid engineering consideration/strategy at the time. Please define what you mean by "valid". > To falsify it, you would merely need documentation that such a philosophy was not a consideration in this design. Well, then I probably don't care? I care whether it was a bad idea, not whether it was a bad idea coming from a bad philosophy or a bad idea standing on its own.

mmt 8y ago
> Well, then I probably don't care? I care whether it was a bad idea, not whether it was a bad idea coming from a bad philosophy or a bad idea standing on its own. If your goal is to prevent such a "bad idea" in the future, then not caring could easily work against you. You'd end up having to expend energy challenging each bad idea on its own, possibly failing even to make inroads because there's a bad philosophy that makes it seem like a good idea (maybe even obviously so, rendering your challenge easily dismissed and a wasted effort). Instead, if you focus your energy on challenging the bad philosophy, you both get to the heart of the matter right away, and you cover all the new bad ideas it enables all at once (and even ahead of time). You also won't have to start from scratch, as the philosophy, unlike every new bad idea, isn't unique, and there's likely plenty of literature out there already that you can use as ammunition.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
  Well, yeah, of course I care. But not for the determination of whether a bad idea is bad. This may be an instance of worse is better, but it is a bad idea regardless, and thus at best an additional piece of evidence against the philosophy.

Dylan16807 8y ago

A hacky implementation can be simultaneously good enough for some users and also completely unacceptable for a standard. It's not worse than nothing, sure. If you use it exactly as expected, and only have one logical user of a file in each process, it does an acceptable job. But in the context of what it's supposed to do, be a generic locking mechanism, it's horrifically broken. So I'll summarize this way: It's completely okay that they wrote this code, as a "version 0.2". But there's no excuse for presenting it as finished code, with reasonable semantics. It's not hyperbole to say that.

mmt 8y ago
> also completely unacceptable for a standard. [...] > It's completely okay that they wrote this code, as a "version 0.2". But there's no excuse for presenting it as finished code, with reasonable semantics. It's not hyperbole to say that. Am I missing something, or are you just saying "Worse is Worse"? The "excuse" is that this way (arguably, perhaps) governed the history of Unix development, well before there was even a standard. What I've been attempting to get people (especially ones with the seemingly most strenuous invectives toward the design) is to perform the thought experiment of placing themselves in the "shoes" of the designers, both by trying to imagine being in that past and, much harder, actually believing in that philosophy. I believe that will go much farther in increasing understand and, to borrow from the HN guidelines, gratify intellectual curiosity, than arguing against strawmen (or just non-existent proponents) of design goodness.
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  > Am I missing something, or are you just saying "Worse is Worse"? No, I'm not. It's fine that they made that code, and were using it. But different situations have different requirements. I'm not objecting to the design work at all. I'm objecting to the idea of calling it "ready to standardize". This is a presentation problem, not a development problem. It was half-baked, and shouldn't have been set in stone until it was fully baked.
  - mmt 8y ago