4 ms·

I can no longer see any coherent point you're trying to make. My point is that you are treating an ideal ("do one thing and doing it well") as an end instead o

I can no longer see any coherent point you're trying to make. My point is that you are treating an ideal ("do one thing and doing it well") as an end instead of a means. Moreover, you are treating it as if there is any actual choice in the matter. In reality, the tooling most of us use on the command line violates the Unix philosophy in some way or another. So the question is not "should I adhere to the Unix philosophy?" but "what makes a good user experience?"

BoingBoomTschak 2y ago
I don't see why my point is that hard to see: the "do one thing" part of the UNIX philosophy is a good ideal to aim for, even if often ignored in favour of a more convenient kitchen sink approach. I then just mentioned that a good majority of these useful Rust tools (I really like hyperfine and oxipng, for example) don't seem to care much about it. Some example of that idea I use every day is https://codemadness.org/sfeed-simple-feed-parser.html https://codemadness.org/sfeed-simple-feed-parser.html, where feed parsing, serialization and visualization are completely separated in small orthogonal binaries with very few options. It could have been one fat "sfeed" or something like its newsboat instead. (shilling it a bit more there: https://world-playground-deceit.net/blog/2024/10/sfeed-setup.html https://world-playground-deceit.net/blog/2024/10/sfeed-setup...)
sgarland 2y ago
I’ve also been guilty of insisting on this, even when, as you point out, most tooling doesn’t strictly follow it anyway. I think it’s an overreaction from being irritated at seeing app after app fall to “now including AI,” or just pivoting for new features because it wasn’t making money fast enough. FWIW, I’ve been using *nix for about 25 years, and had zero problems adapting to ripgrep. You kept -i and -v, which honestly covers 90% of common usage.
- burntsushi 2y ago
  Sorry for the late reply. I just wanted to say that I don't think AI has anything to do with this. I've been seeing this sort of complaining, goal post shifting and confusing means with ends for probably decades now. I mean, AI was around then too, but not like it is today, which is what I assume you meant. Even when I release ripgrep ~9 years ago, AI wasn't what it was today, and I saw the same sort of complaints. I don't usually like doing this, but if I had to step out of my wheelhouse and guesstimate, I think it's probably just some form of nostalgia reasoning. People remember the "simpler" times and just want to have it again. But of course, the "simpler" times are less a reflection of reality and more a reflection of your perception of the world. IMO anyway. (I have the same sort of inclination, but I try to recognize it for what it is: personal bias. Others seem unable to do this and mistake this personal bias for objective reality.)

BoingBoomTschak 2y ago

I don't see why my point is that hard to see: the "do one thing" part of the UNIX philosophy is a good ideal to aim for, even if often ignored in favour of a more convenient kitchen sink approach. I then just mentioned that a good majority of these useful Rust tools (I really like hyperfine and oxipng, for example) don't seem to care much about it. Some example of that idea I use every day is https://codemadness.org/sfeed-simple-feed-parser.html https://codemadness.org/sfeed-simple-feed-parser.html, where feed parsing, serialization and visualization are completely separated in small orthogonal binaries with very few options. It could have been one fat "sfeed" or something like its newsboat instead. (shilling it a bit more there: https://world-playground-deceit.net/blog/2024/10/sfeed-setup.html https://world-playground-deceit.net/blog/2024/10/sfeed-setup...)

sgarland 2y ago

I’ve also been guilty of insisting on this, even when, as you point out, most tooling doesn’t strictly follow it anyway. I think it’s an overreaction from being irritated at seeing app after app fall to “now including AI,” or just pivoting for new features because it wasn’t making money fast enough. FWIW, I’ve been using *nix for about 25 years, and had zero problems adapting to ripgrep. You kept -i and -v, which honestly covers 90% of common usage.

burntsushi 2y ago
Sorry for the late reply. I just wanted to say that I don't think AI has anything to do with this. I've been seeing this sort of complaining, goal post shifting and confusing means with ends for probably decades now. I mean, AI was around then too, but not like it is today, which is what I assume you meant. Even when I release ripgrep ~9 years ago, AI wasn't what it was today, and I saw the same sort of complaints. I don't usually like doing this, but if I had to step out of my wheelhouse and guesstimate, I think it's probably just some form of nostalgia reasoning. People remember the "simpler" times and just want to have it again. But of course, the "simpler" times are less a reflection of reality and more a reflection of your perception of the world. IMO anyway. (I have the same sort of inclination, but I try to recognize it for what it is: personal bias. Others seem unable to do this and mistake this personal bias for objective reality.)