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Whatever happened to the Unix philosphy? 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well'. Last thing I want in my inbox. Call me a purist but email is for ema

by d43594 13y ago

Whatever happened to the Unix philosphy? 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well'. Last thing I want in my inbox. Call me a purist but email is for emailing people.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
kyrias 13y ago
Few things adhere to the Unix philosophies anymore, and really, why should they?
- d43594 13y ago
  The question you should really be asking is why shouldn't they? The best applications out there do one thing and do it well. Awk, sed, vi(m), emacs, git. Need I go on?
  - infrec 13y ago
    This is simply nonsensical. Even the applications you listed don't just "do one thing". Vim and emacs have a trillion features each. Git has way more features than some other versioning systems. When does "one thing" turn into multiple things? Within the context of the thread - when did gmail stop doing one thing? When they added filters? When they added all of the labs features? With this current announcement? Do one thing and do it well is great but defining the scope of the one thing is not something to be taken trivially.
  - tree_of_item 13y ago
    What is the one thing Emacs does well? Emacs is the polar opposite of the Unix philosophy; it's more in line with the Lisp Machine tradition. Programs like sort, uniq, and grep don't embed interpreters for dynamic languages and provide thousands of different extensions for anything from reading mail to connecting to IRC.
abraininavat 13y ago
What happened to it? It's still around. People still write programs that do one thing and do it well. You're welcome to use them. Are you implying that there ever was a time when all programs did only one thing and did it well? Which era was that?
- d43594 13y ago
  I think you are missing the subtle tones, implications and context within the comment. It was not meant as a blanket statement hence it is a comment against a specific item.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
dragonwriter 13y ago
> Whatever happened to the Unix philosphy? 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well'. Its still a valid and important way of constructing software systems. But users mostly don't want a separate UI for each of those components, they want them strung together in a way which provides a simple experience that allows them to get the things they want to do done.
- d43594 13y ago
  Then write a dashboard facility without polluting your existing applications by bolting barely related features onto them.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Then write a dashboard facility without polluting your existing applications by bolting barely related features onto them. How is automatically recognizing meaning and surfacing action requests from email a "barely related" feature to an existing email client?

by d43594 13y ago

Whatever happened to the Unix philosphy? 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well'. Last thing I want in my inbox. Call me a purist but email is for emailing people.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

kyrias 13y ago

Few things adhere to the Unix philosophies anymore, and really, why should they?

d43594 13y ago
The question you should really be asking is why shouldn't they? The best applications out there do one thing and do it well. Awk, sed, vi(m), emacs, git. Need I go on?
- infrec 13y ago
  This is simply nonsensical. Even the applications you listed don't just "do one thing". Vim and emacs have a trillion features each. Git has way more features than some other versioning systems. When does "one thing" turn into multiple things? Within the context of the thread - when did gmail stop doing one thing? When they added filters? When they added all of the labs features? With this current announcement? Do one thing and do it well is great but defining the scope of the one thing is not something to be taken trivially.
- tree_of_item 13y ago
  What is the one thing Emacs does well? Emacs is the polar opposite of the Unix philosophy; it's more in line with the Lisp Machine tradition. Programs like sort, uniq, and grep don't embed interpreters for dynamic languages and provide thousands of different extensions for anything from reading mail to connecting to IRC.

abraininavat 13y ago

What happened to it? It's still around. People still write programs that do one thing and do it well. You're welcome to use them. Are you implying that there ever was a time when all programs did only one thing and did it well? Which era was that?

d43594 13y ago
I think you are missing the subtle tones, implications and context within the comment. It was not meant as a blanket statement hence it is a comment against a specific item.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

dragonwriter 13y ago

> Whatever happened to the Unix philosphy? 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well'. Its still a valid and important way of constructing software systems. But users mostly don't want a separate UI for each of those components, they want them strung together in a way which provides a simple experience that allows them to get the things they want to do done.

d43594 13y ago
Then write a dashboard facility without polluting your existing applications by bolting barely related features onto them.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Then write a dashboard facility without polluting your existing applications by bolting barely related features onto them. How is automatically recognizing meaning and surfacing action requests from email a "barely related" feature to an existing email client?