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This poem is dismissive of the progress humanity has made in computing and information technology. Tools like Pandas and Arduino and computer graphics were not

This poem is dismissive of the progress humanity has made in computing and information technology. Tools like Pandas and Arduino and computer graphics were not mature in 1970s, and in order for data science, hobbyist electronics, or modern filmmaking to get where it is today, it was built on a massive ecosystem of CRUD and poorly designed abstractions like OOP. But it is still an enjoyable read, and contains kernels of truth - we have abandoned the unix philosophy and created bloated, poorly engineered software. I think the comparison to music and hair cutting is very apt - the mark of a skilled engineer is knowing how to limit scope and ambition so that value can be delivered quickly and elegantly. We all roll our eyes at the next baby sitter app, but at the end of the day we probably use some app to find a baby sitter - whether it be Google Search or Yelp. In a biological ecosystem, all things that can be, will be.

pydry 6y ago
The UNIX philosophy has never been followed very assiduously. The 1970s bloated crap just didn't survive until today while ls did.
simonh 6y ago
Yep, I'm not sure how small single purpose utilities passing text between them are supposed to implement a GUI framework, or Kerbal Space Program. Many of the applications we're creating nowadays are solving gnarly, poorly understood problems.
- nindalf 6y ago
  It’s just longing and nostalgia for a bygone era. Oh, how perfect software was when the sages of yore imparted them to us. But we turned away from their wisdom and left the Garden of Eden. I think we have it pretty good. We continue to build and the stuff that isn’t good, gets rebuilt. That’s fine. What’s important is that we have the means to build good, lasting software if we choose to prioritise it. We have languages and tools that the ancients did not have.
- jes5199 6y ago
  the successor to UNIX wouldn’t have to be text. like, imagine a VR world with a lot of different tools that can operate on VR objects. Then ask yourself why desktop and phone UIs are little walled-off boxes that can’t interact with anything shared except saved files. but well, KSP is a game, and a GUI framework wouldn’t exist in that paradigm, so I’m not sure if I know what you’re getting at.
  - cercatrova 6y ago
    Sounds like PowerShell to me, each part isn't text but its own object that every other script can manipulate.
  - jcelerier 6y ago
    > and a GUI framework wouldn’t exist in that paradigm, there are UI frameworks in node-based environments where you connect little boxes between to each other to create buttons, text, clickable areas, etc. One of my jobs has been about migrating off that into more traditional OOP-based languages because it just sucks ten thousands less times when your UI starts to grow.
    - jes5199 6y ago
      yeah, the nest of connected lines metaphor doesn't seem to work unless you have a very simple model. I keep thinking there must be some other spacial metaphor that would be as powerful as code but engage more parts of the brain, but I haven't found it yet.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    > desktop and phone UIs are little walled-off boxes that can’t interact with anything shared except saved files First, this is not true, as they are also able to communicate through the clipboard. And second, the point of the file is to have a durable form for the data. A VR world is still going to use files. EDIT : In fact, these two modalities of working with data directly stem from the hardware : "live" memory of the clipboard in the always powered Random Access Memory versus "dead" memory of the files in the 'hard' drive which keeps storing information when unpowered. Maybe there are other potential modalities than these two, but I personally am unable to imagine them. (I guess that there's an 'in-between' with logs stored as files, but that have their most ancient information regularly erased... which ends up happening with any information, regardless of the storage format, given enough time !) EDIT2 : And we both forgot about the concept of databases, which tend to be more complex in abstraction than filesystems, and can either exist in parallel or on top of a filesystem, and which many apps definitely use. But they obviously have to compose too with the underlying bit-juggling hardware.
strgcmc 6y ago
I don't think it's dismissive to be honest. In many ways, software is not so different from the rest of the world. Industry (in the Industrial Revolution sense), underwent similar transformations (and is still going through them), from dirty/dangerous/back-breaking factories of the 1800s, to slightly-less-dirty and slightly-safer and more automated factories of the 1900s, to... whatever the 2000s will bring. I'm honestly not sure where software stands in relation; maybe software is actually closer to the 1800s-equivalent of the Industrial Revolution, than to the gleaming 2020 gigafactories of today. Maybe we are still too early. There is probably some golden age of industrial production that industrialists look back fondly on, in the same way the author and many others idealize Unix. Likewise, complaints about rampant/mindless over-consumption, are not new for society at large, especially as we as a civilization really finally start to wrestle seriously with the question of, just how much can this planet support, and what we can take away from it or pollute it with, before the ecosystem collapses? Do we really need another factory, another plastic widget that'll never decompose, another smartphone that will end up in a landfill in a two-year upgrade cycle? But, this progress, messy as it is, is still progress. In the aggregate, people live longer, are healthier and safer, and there are just more people, than there have ever been in the history of this planet. In part, all of these industrial processes made it possible. That doesn't mean there hasn't been waste. Now is the time to reconcile, what our waste is actually costing us, and how much waste we can actually support, as a society and a civilization. "Too much software" has potential for real harm, whether in physical pollution or in mental/emotional harm (i.e. the attention economy, the assault on user privacy, our partisan echo chambers, etc.).

pydry 6y ago

The UNIX philosophy has never been followed very assiduously. The 1970s bloated crap just didn't survive until today while ls did.

simonh 6y ago

Yep, I'm not sure how small single purpose utilities passing text between them are supposed to implement a GUI framework, or Kerbal Space Program. Many of the applications we're creating nowadays are solving gnarly, poorly understood problems.

nindalf 6y ago
It’s just longing and nostalgia for a bygone era. Oh, how perfect software was when the sages of yore imparted them to us. But we turned away from their wisdom and left the Garden of Eden. I think we have it pretty good. We continue to build and the stuff that isn’t good, gets rebuilt. That’s fine. What’s important is that we have the means to build good, lasting software if we choose to prioritise it. We have languages and tools that the ancients did not have.
jes5199 6y ago
the successor to UNIX wouldn’t have to be text. like, imagine a VR world with a lot of different tools that can operate on VR objects. Then ask yourself why desktop and phone UIs are little walled-off boxes that can’t interact with anything shared except saved files. but well, KSP is a game, and a GUI framework wouldn’t exist in that paradigm, so I’m not sure if I know what you’re getting at.
- cercatrova 6y ago
  Sounds like PowerShell to me, each part isn't text but its own object that every other script can manipulate.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  > and a GUI framework wouldn’t exist in that paradigm, there are UI frameworks in node-based environments where you connect little boxes between to each other to create buttons, text, clickable areas, etc. One of my jobs has been about migrating off that into more traditional OOP-based languages because it just sucks ten thousands less times when your UI starts to grow.
  - jes5199 6y ago
    yeah, the nest of connected lines metaphor doesn't seem to work unless you have a very simple model. I keep thinking there must be some other spacial metaphor that would be as powerful as code but engage more parts of the brain, but I haven't found it yet.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  > desktop and phone UIs are little walled-off boxes that can’t interact with anything shared except saved files First, this is not true, as they are also able to communicate through the clipboard. And second, the point of the file is to have a durable form for the data. A VR world is still going to use files. EDIT : In fact, these two modalities of working with data directly stem from the hardware : "live" memory of the clipboard in the always powered Random Access Memory versus "dead" memory of the files in the 'hard' drive which keeps storing information when unpowered. Maybe there are other potential modalities than these two, but I personally am unable to imagine them. (I guess that there's an 'in-between' with logs stored as files, but that have their most ancient information regularly erased... which ends up happening with any information, regardless of the storage format, given enough time !) EDIT2 : And we both forgot about the concept of databases, which tend to be more complex in abstraction than filesystems, and can either exist in parallel or on top of a filesystem, and which many apps definitely use. But they obviously have to compose too with the underlying bit-juggling hardware.

strgcmc 6y ago

I don't think it's dismissive to be honest. In many ways, software is not so different from the rest of the world. Industry (in the Industrial Revolution sense), underwent similar transformations (and is still going through them), from dirty/dangerous/back-breaking factories of the 1800s, to slightly-less-dirty and slightly-safer and more automated factories of the 1900s, to... whatever the 2000s will bring. I'm honestly not sure where software stands in relation; maybe software is actually closer to the 1800s-equivalent of the Industrial Revolution, than to the gleaming 2020 gigafactories of today. Maybe we are still too early. There is probably some golden age of industrial production that industrialists look back fondly on, in the same way the author and many others idealize Unix. Likewise, complaints about rampant/mindless over-consumption, are not new for society at large, especially as we as a civilization really finally start to wrestle seriously with the question of, just how much can this planet support, and what we can take away from it or pollute it with, before the ecosystem collapses? Do we really need another factory, another plastic widget that'll never decompose, another smartphone that will end up in a landfill in a two-year upgrade cycle? But, this progress, messy as it is, is still progress. In the aggregate, people live longer, are healthier and safer, and there are just more people, than there have ever been in the history of this planet. In part, all of these industrial processes made it possible. That doesn't mean there hasn't been waste. Now is the time to reconcile, what our waste is actually costing us, and how much waste we can actually support, as a society and a civilization. "Too much software" has potential for real harm, whether in physical pollution or in mental/emotional harm (i.e. the attention economy, the assault on user privacy, our partisan echo chambers, etc.).