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[107.215.223.229]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id d9443c01a7336-1ef0bada3efsm49988415ad.114.2024.05.11.07.42.07 (version=TLS1_2 cipher=ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128); Sat, 11 May 2024 07:42:07 -0700 (PDT) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Mime-Version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 16.0 \(3774.500.171.1.1\)) In-Reply-To: Date: Sat, 11 May 2024 07:41:56 -0700 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-Id: References: To: Dan Cross X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.3774.500.171.1.1) Message-ID-Hash: GRAZBXWZDJF74UVPU7Q5QACHJAJ6NXL6 X-Message-ID-Hash: GRAZBXWZDJF74UVPU7Q5QACHJAJ6NXL6 X-MailFrom: bakul@iitbombay.org X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: coff@tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [COFF] Re: [TUHS] On Bloat and the Idea of Small Specialized Tools List-Id: Computer Old Farts Forum Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: From: Bakul Shah via COFF Reply-To: Bakul Shah X-Spam: Yes On May 11, 2024, at 6:12=E2=80=AFAM, Dan Cross wrote: >=20 > On Fri, May 10, 2024 at 7:23=E2=80=AFPM Nevin Liber = wrote: >> On Fri, May 10, 2024 at 11:37=E2=80=AFAM Clem Cole = wrote: >>> The key is that not all "bloat" is the same (really)=E2=80=94or = maybe one person's bloat is another person's preference. >>=20 >> A lot of "bloat" comes because our systems really aren't focused on = "discoverability". >>=20 >> 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? >=20 > 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.