3 ms·

Problem is, it’s quite difficult to know in advance what will be the win. Things that help the development and maintenance processes are good, even if they don

Problem is, it’s quite difficult to know in advance what will be the win. Things that help the development and maintenance processes are good, even if they don’t map 1-1 to a problem. Projects are always short of resources and code is hard to maintain. Perhaps Linux might have come from plan 9 rather than minix if there was a better internet when it appeared. Perhaps we’d have plan gnine from rms. I see a value in being to abstract away hardware issues as it lets me reduce the complexity of what I’m working on. Operation within an abstraction can be improved or changed without changing what uses it - and the changes are made in a single place, simplifying maintenance. There can always be performance issues, but one should not set out to tune things without a reason to.

jhbadger 4y ago
Exactly, and each system doing something different from standard AT&T V7 Unix did so because they thought something was broken. And they weren't entirely wrong. Yes, most people don't use Plan 9, or Hurd, or Minix, today, but we don't use V7 Unix either. Unix/Linux evolved, and it it didn't do so in a vacuum isolated from these other systems but took things from them that turned out to be improvements.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  I wouldn't tell, looking at how some keep using text based workflows, TUI, and multiple TTYs as if their last Linux distribution has hardly changed since AT&T V7 UNIX.
  - shadowofneptune 4y ago
    If we're being nitpicky, did TUIs even exist on V7? IIRC, support for terminals that did more than scroll downwards was lacking in Unix at the time, only really starting on BSD.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      "A few years later, Mary Ann Horton, who had maintained the vi and termcap sources at Berkeley, went to AT&T Corporation and made a different version using terminfo, which became part of UNIX System III and UNIX System V." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curses_(programming_library) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curses_(programming_library)
  - t-3 4y ago
    What do you have against text? I can't cope with GUIs hiding everything while wasting half the screen on decorations. Text is simple, doesn't change, is easy to remember. I started with GUIs too, used Windows, Mac OS 9 and OS X before discovering the CLI, so this isn't nostalgia, I really prefer text. It's incredibly empowering to interact with the computer through a simple and comprehensible text interface.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Text, is ok when it makes sense, and even then, a REPL is much better option. Living in the past of when graphics workstations were more expensive than buying a house, if available at all, not so much. When I started, text was the only option, so yeah for me it doesn't make sense to throw away everything we got since 1980's in computing.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Have you ever considered that's because this is an optimal solution to the problem ?
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      The problem being living in the past. There is this thing called REPL and scripting languages.

jhbadger 4y ago

Exactly, and each system doing something different from standard AT&T V7 Unix did so because they thought something was broken. And they weren't entirely wrong. Yes, most people don't use Plan 9, or Hurd, or Minix, today, but we don't use V7 Unix either. Unix/Linux evolved, and it it didn't do so in a vacuum isolated from these other systems but took things from them that turned out to be improvements.

pjmlp 4y ago
I wouldn't tell, looking at how some keep using text based workflows, TUI, and multiple TTYs as if their last Linux distribution has hardly changed since AT&T V7 UNIX.
- shadowofneptune 4y ago
  If we're being nitpicky, did TUIs even exist on V7? IIRC, support for terminals that did more than scroll downwards was lacking in Unix at the time, only really starting on BSD.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    "A few years later, Mary Ann Horton, who had maintained the vi and termcap sources at Berkeley, went to AT&T Corporation and made a different version using terminfo, which became part of UNIX System III and UNIX System V." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curses_(programming_library) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curses_(programming_library)
- t-3 4y ago
  What do you have against text? I can't cope with GUIs hiding everything while wasting half the screen on decorations. Text is simple, doesn't change, is easy to remember. I started with GUIs too, used Windows, Mac OS 9 and OS X before discovering the CLI, so this isn't nostalgia, I really prefer text. It's incredibly empowering to interact with the computer through a simple and comprehensible text interface.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Text, is ok when it makes sense, and even then, a REPL is much better option. Living in the past of when graphics workstations were more expensive than buying a house, if available at all, not so much. When I started, text was the only option, so yeah for me it doesn't make sense to throw away everything we got since 1980's in computing.
- ilyt 4y ago
  Have you ever considered that's because this is an optimal solution to the problem ?
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    The problem being living in the past. There is this thing called REPL and scripting languages.