3 ms·

Not saying I disagree with you, but you mention the "unix philosophy". These last few years I've seen a lot of people repeat that sentence over and over again,

by Morgawr 13y ago

Not saying I disagree with you, but you mention the "unix philosophy". These last few years I've seen a lot of people repeat that sentence over and over again, but I ask you, what is the "unix philosophy"? Treating everything as a file? Do one thing and do it well? Develop beautiful software, not bloated and simple? Every single person has a different idea of what this mythical "unix philosophy" actually is. Certainly, all these practices apply well on servers but the world is moving forward and we have much much more complex devices that aren't just mainframes with terminals anymore. We are not dealing with software anymore, we are dealing with systems. And we want performance and stability. Developing single components in a totally individual and non-connected way, oblivious of their environment does not always work anymore. Sometimes you need to build an environment, not just a single component. You need to have software that interfaces and integrates properly. Does the Unix philosophy go against that? I don't know. The point is that you should always question things, not just repeat "but the Unix philosophy says...", because systems evolve. Furthermore, I'll point towards this page http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html It might be relevant, it might be not, but it's a good read nonetheless.

zimbatm 13y ago
It's also an excuse to avoid good design. It requires more effort to design a system that doesn't have a strong coupling between the components and a clear set of abstractions. Does it mean that systemd is bloated ? I don't know, I would have to study the problem space closer.
Pacabel 13y ago
Even if we can't define the "UNIX philosophy" exactly, I think we can still look at a given software system and see whether or not it generally approaches that set of ideals as a whole. When compared to UNIX-oriented software of the past several decades, I think it's clear that modern GNOME is very different. Systemd is also very different. Being so different in so many core ways means that they inherently don't adhere to the practices and ideals we can consider to be typical of software adopting the "UNIX philosophy".

by Morgawr 13y ago

zimbatm 13y ago

It's also an excuse to avoid good design. It requires more effort to design a system that doesn't have a strong coupling between the components and a clear set of abstractions. Does it mean that systemd is bloated ? I don't know, I would have to study the problem space closer.

Pacabel 13y ago

Even if we can't define the "UNIX philosophy" exactly, I think we can still look at a given software system and see whether or not it generally approaches that set of ideals as a whole. When compared to UNIX-oriented software of the past several decades, I think it's clear that modern GNOME is very different. Systemd is also very different. Being so different in so many core ways means that they inherently don't adhere to the practices and ideals we can consider to be typical of software adopting the "UNIX philosophy".