4 ms·
The problem is that we don't just live on our own machines. We hop around to different boxes and just being able to type what you are used to matters. My dotfil
by 3pt14159 4y ago
The problem is that we don't just live on our own machines. We hop around to different boxes and just being able to type what you are used to matters. My dotfiles and other tools don't go or even work everywhere.
We shouldn't change the oldest parts of our OSes without a really good reason.
- acdha 4y agoI find this reasoning interesting since it's why I _stopped_ using egrep/fgrep around the turn of the century: because those aren't standard, it wasn't uncommon to find that you depended on some behaviour which wasn't available in the version installed on some random server but it worked when you used grep.
- markstos 4y agoI don't remember why I stopped using the shorter `egrep` and only use `grep -E`, but I suspect this was the reason. I used to work on a variety of BSD and Linux servers. I'm fine with this clean-up and simplification. Eventually, there will be more future users of `grep` than past users.
- acdha 4y agoYeah, I worked with enough older systems (SunOS, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD, etc.) that I don't remember which ones caused me to do that, either. I'm really glad it's no longer common to have things like hand-compiled installs of GNU utilities, especially since not every sysadmin was diligent about updating all of them.
- 3pt14159 4y agoI switched to just grep, but it's still part of the same line of thinking. I really, really, really dislike it when something that used to be reliable changes or is removed. I understand and accept that things change, but when it's as simple as a symlink or what have you I really do not see the cost-benefit tradeoff for sunsetting something.