3 ms·
It's interesting to me the contrast between what the question of "why" means to different people. The answer on Superuser is wonderfully well researched, and ve
by bradleyland 11y ago
It's interesting to me the contrast between what the question of "why" means to different people. The answer on Superuser is wonderfully well researched, and very complete, but does it really answer the question? I guess it depends on your perspective.
Imagine you are in standing in a bedroom, and someone asks you, "Why are you in this bedroom?"
Does you answer look like this?
"I walked in through the front door, passed through the living room, down the hall, then used the door to enter this room."
Or like this?
"I was feeling kind of sleepy, so I figured I'd come in here and lie down on the bed."
The former is not a perfect analogue for the Superuser answer, but perfect analogues are difficult to come by.
- abrowne 11y agoThat was my thought too. It answered how and when, not why.
- fl0wenol 11y agoIf the why was ever recorded anywhere, it would have been in the comments of the code when it was committed, because it wasn't explained in the documentation or anywhere else other than: "it does this". Either that or a email/USENET discussion from that time period; but those aren't so easily retrieved unless you were originally involved in that ancient discussion. It's worth the effort to document going to the source to see if any insights code be unearthed, even if it doesn't reveal much, just so that others know what has already been explored and to look/ask elsewhere if this is not a sufficient background. I think the logic to the why has been lost to time. We might talk about why it would or wouldn't be a good idea for a modern version of ls; it's something to give a few moments' thought, but no more.
- vacri 11y agoIt does do the 'why', in a way. Why does the OSX ls do -foo-? Well, because the source OS did it that way. It wasn't a decision by the OSX people, but inherited.