4 ms·

I agree with 95% of what he says, but I'd make one change to the Unix philosophy: text files aren't the best primitive. Text files have a super low-level API (

by mrshoe 17y ago

I agree with 95% of what he says, but I'd make one change to the Unix philosophy: text files aren't the best primitive. Text files have a super low-level API (stat, seek, read). I think the system he describes would be much more usable if he picked slightly higher-level data abstractions. I would recommend Python's built-in types: list, tuple, dict, set. Most data can be easily represented by these types and they provide a higher level API than streams (files), which means the barriers to using them are much lower.

scottjackson 17y ago
That's probably fair. I honestly don't think we're at the point where we can abandon text files altogether, but you're right -- a lot of data could definitely be stored in slightly higher-level data structures. I still really like text files though :)
- emmett 17y ago
  Text files are just a wire protocol. It would be nice to have a standard (similar to http) for what you send over the wire in general. Great post by the way, very thought provoking.
silentbicycle 17y ago
The Unix idea has never been that text files are the best primitive, it's that they're the best approach until you have a solid reason to do otherwise, and you should start simple. (Unix is more pragmatic than that - "worse is better", etc.) As long as you use plain text, you can use grep, diff, various version-control systems, etc., without having to rewrite any tools for your custom format. Still, sometimes you need more elaborate formats. SQLite is one good example of a portable, open, simple format that is complementary to flat files. JSON and Lua also seem very Unix-y to me. Unix typically also uses ELF, various compiled key-value databases, etc. Unix's choice of data types was also influenced by being written for computer that had 32k of RAM. That's, what, as much as a bar of soap nowadays?

by mrshoe 17y ago

scottjackson 17y ago

That's probably fair. I honestly don't think we're at the point where we can abandon text files altogether, but you're right -- a lot of data could definitely be stored in slightly higher-level data structures. I still really like text files though :)

emmett 17y ago
Text files are just a wire protocol. It would be nice to have a standard (similar to http) for what you send over the wire in general. Great post by the way, very thought provoking.

silentbicycle 17y ago

The Unix idea has never been that text files are the best primitive, it's that they're the best approach until you have a solid reason to do otherwise, and you should start simple. (Unix is more pragmatic than that - "worse is better", etc.) As long as you use plain text, you can use grep, diff, various version-control systems, etc., without having to rewrite any tools for your custom format. Still, sometimes you need more elaborate formats. SQLite is one good example of a portable, open, simple format that is complementary to flat files. JSON and Lua also seem very Unix-y to me. Unix typically also uses ELF, various compiled key-value databases, etc. Unix's choice of data types was also influenced by being written for computer that had 32k of RAM. That's, what, as much as a bar of soap nowadays?