[COFF] Re: [TUHS] On Bloat and the Idea of Small Specialized Tools

[Bakul Shah via COFF <coff@tuhs.org>]

On May 11, 2024, at 6:12 AM, Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, May 10, 2024 at 7:23 PM Nevin Liber <nliber@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, May 10, 2024 at 11:37 AM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>>> The key is that not all "bloat" is the same (really)—or maybe one person's bloat is another person's preference.
>> 
>> A lot of "bloat" comes because our systems really aren't focused on "discoverability".
>> 
>> While I probably have used "pr" in the past, I've totally forgotten, the name "pr" doesn't really help me understand what it is for, and it's just one of 982 files in my /usr/bin directory alone.  How does one discover it?
> 
> This is a fantastic question. At one point, I went through every
> command in /bin and /usr/bin and figured out what it did. That was a
> tremendously useful exercise, but that was in the days when the total
> number of commands in those directories numbered in the low hundreds;
> 982 is a lot.

I did this when I first encountered Unix (v7): tried out most things
described in every command's man page! I still occasionally scan the
the [s]bin directories. But it seems there are fewer and fewer new
programs that can be used in cmd pipelines. The situation is a bit
like Sanskrit (built from a relatively small set of root words but
infinitely combinable) and prakrits, vernacular dialects that are
not so flexible but more practical.