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As I was reading this I was enthusiastically agreeing with the idea, but something felt super familiar about it. Then I realized this is basically the same conc
by hpoe 6y ago
As I was reading this I was enthusiastically agreeing with the idea, but something felt super familiar about it. Then I realized this is basically the same concept as Unix pipes.
I have my little individual programs, grep, awk, sed, jq, etc, and then I can endlessly mix and match those different components to do what I want.
The limitation that I have seen with Unix pipes isn't often with the ability to process or manage the data it is that it only works if all the data is setup the proper way. As I have been in the industry longer it seems to me that most code that gets written isn't about actual computing but just centered around importing and transforming data that is expressed in different ways.
Is there something that makes reading in disparate data records easier so I can focus on the computing part of computer program and less time on parsing data?
- adamnemecek 6y agoUnix pipes make it hard to have a large graph. Like most pipes take one thing and produce one thing. You don’t really have complex data flow graphs.
- taeric 6y agoThough, this really kind of fits with the metaphor. Pipes typically just send liquid. You could have a conduit connector to join a bunch of wires/signals, I suppose. But, realistically, that is a mess always.
- adamnemecek 6y agoRight but you generally have a complex pipe system even with liquids. Sewers send waste to a particular processing facility. A node editor makes it somewhat less messy.
- lispweeniejr 6y agoyou aren't wrong, but i wanted to point out that through `tee` and `cat` you can split or merge pipelines, and with FIFOs you can awkwardly create graph cycles