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I don't think the metaphor applies because kitchen utensils' forms are dictated are their purpose, but software interfaces are abstractions. A fairer analogy w

I don't think the metaphor applies because kitchen utensils' forms are dictated are their purpose, but software interfaces are abstractions. A fairer analogy would be if everything in the kitchen was bowl-shaped, but you could do bowl-like actions and get non-bowl behavior. Drop the carrot in the peelbowl and it is peeled, drop the carrot in the knifebowl and it is diced, drop the cubes in the stovebowl and they are cooked. Every manipulation is placing things in bowls. Every bowl is the same shape which means you can store them however is intuitive to you (instead of by shape).

jodrellblank 3y ago
The counter would be that different tasks are different and that's why everything isn't bowl shaped. Analogously, programming languages which are strongly opinionated (purely functional, array-based, strictly static) are far less generally popular than programming languages which are multi-paradigm and flexibly typed. People have access to user-mode filesystems and FUSE, people could have made everything have a file-like interface by now if that was desirable - apparently it isn't. And because different tasks are different, it makes sense that they would fit different abstractions and interfaces, wouldn't it?
- plagiarist 3y ago
  The function defines the shape of the kitchen utensil, yes. That's not a counter, those are physical objects. In software, we have far more flexibility as to what "shapes" are available. Having a common interface for working with things is indeed why the flexibly-typed languages are popular. Everything is an object. You call methods on every object in the same way. You don't need to figure out how to interact with the network card, someone has written a library to make that into objects. You don't need to figure out how to interact with a file system, someone has figured out to make that into objects. Bringing up popularity of programming languages is an argument in favor of "'everything is a file' is a useful abstraction." Either people will write FUSE plugins or they don't want consistent interfaces is a false dichotomy. When you are interacting with programs, you use mostly keyboards and mice. Why not create a bespoke hardware interactions for each program so they can behave more like kitchen utensils? Deleting a file is a different action than creating one, so I should have to shake my computer like an Etch-a-Sketch to delete images and rub the trackpad like an eraser to remove text files.

jodrellblank 3y ago

The counter would be that different tasks are different and that's why everything isn't bowl shaped. Analogously, programming languages which are strongly opinionated (purely functional, array-based, strictly static) are far less generally popular than programming languages which are multi-paradigm and flexibly typed. People have access to user-mode filesystems and FUSE, people could have made everything have a file-like interface by now if that was desirable - apparently it isn't. And because different tasks are different, it makes sense that they would fit different abstractions and interfaces, wouldn't it?

plagiarist 3y ago
The function defines the shape of the kitchen utensil, yes. That's not a counter, those are physical objects. In software, we have far more flexibility as to what "shapes" are available. Having a common interface for working with things is indeed why the flexibly-typed languages are popular. Everything is an object. You call methods on every object in the same way. You don't need to figure out how to interact with the network card, someone has written a library to make that into objects. You don't need to figure out how to interact with a file system, someone has figured out to make that into objects. Bringing up popularity of programming languages is an argument in favor of "'everything is a file' is a useful abstraction." Either people will write FUSE plugins or they don't want consistent interfaces is a false dichotomy. When you are interacting with programs, you use mostly keyboards and mice. Why not create a bespoke hardware interactions for each program so they can behave more like kitchen utensils? Deleting a file is a different action than creating one, so I should have to shake my computer like an Etch-a-Sketch to delete images and rub the trackpad like an eraser to remove text files.