From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 13040 invoked from network); 4 Jul 2021 00:56:33 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 4 Jul 2021 00:56:33 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 4294C9C9AB; Sun, 4 Jul 2021 10:56:31 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 31CAD9C871; Sun, 4 Jul 2021 10:55:37 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id A5D019C871; Sun, 4 Jul 2021 10:55:34 +1000 (AEST) X-Greylist: delayed 452 seconds by postgrey-1.36 at minnie.tuhs.org; Sun, 04 Jul 2021 10:55:32 AEST Received: from mailout7.ceti.pl (mailout7.ceti.pl [62.121.128.47]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id D078C9C86C for ; Sun, 4 Jul 2021 10:55:32 +1000 (AEST) Received: from tau1.ceti.pl (tau.ceti.pl [62.121.128.11]) by mailout7.ceti.pl (Postfix) with ESMTP id ACCD737811E2 for ; Sun, 4 Jul 2021 02:47:57 +0200 (CEST) Received: by tau1.ceti.pl (Postfix, from userid 3727) id 6EF3F96096D; Sun, 4 Jul 2021 02:47:57 +0200 (CEST) Date: Sun, 4 Jul 2021 02:47:57 +0200 From: Tomasz Rola To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org Message-ID: <20210704004757.GB24671@tau1.ceti.pl> References: <20210702213648.GW817@mcvoy.com> <396911b232bae5938068a14fe0f7181e@firemail.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Subject: Re: [TUHS] [tuhs] The Unix shell: a 50-year view X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" On Sat, Jul 03, 2021 at 09:20:57AM -0400, Dan Cross wrote: [...] > Much of Unix's early evolution and thus architecture and philosophy, came > from addressing a set of problems that people had in a historical context > that, one could argue, aren't that relevant anymore. I mostly agree with you, but I think certain things should be expressed more explicitly, even if I do not want to be picky. So, I see the claim of Unix not being relevant anymore might be interpreted in two ways, and both are not (quite) true. First, if it means "for all people it is not relevant anymore", such thing never happened IMHO. For this, all those folks would need to consider Unix as a tool for their problems and decide that it was obsolete. But, most of humans were never so much interested in computers to know about "some yooo-neex" and this state of things lasts to these days. If they use computer (cellphone), it is most probably because now the devices enable dating and other forms of entertainment. Some of them even heard about "Leah nukes". Another way of understanding your statement is "there was a group of folks for whom Unix was relevant and lost its appeal". This, again, not true. The group itself may have lost members and gained members, but I believe it is more or less same size. Maybe even bigger than it was, and ability to have anything "unix-like" for free (as in "voluntary donation") plays huge role here. > A hierarchical filesystem in a global namespace, pipelines > facilitating chaining of filters for interactive use, a simple but > weak permissions model, unstructured text as a universal interchange > format, terminal-oriented text editors.... All of these were fine on > shared multiuser interactive machines, but do they matter as much > now? Depends. In a land of the blind a one-eye should be very careful, because he would not be a king. I certainly would not like to be endlessly asked for help with installing Linux. I think majority of computer users do not care, will not care, that they have some files on their machines or even that what they have are the machines. So, they might not appreciate your knowledge about such things. Perhaps it is a good thing? [...] > Perhaps I've mentioned this story before: a former colleague at Google was > writing a shell script to figure something out. It wasn't working. Really, > what he wanted was basically a `grep -q` and an `if` statement, but he'd > written a complicated mess with shell functions that tried to "return" the > exit status of the processes they ran: his shell script was written more > like a Python program. I rewrote it for him in half-a-dozen or so lines > (down from 30 or 40) and talked about Unix for a minute, the philosophy, > etc. At the end of my monologue extolling the virtues of our style of > computing, he looked at me blankly and said something along the lines of, > "yeah. I think that time has passed and people just don't conceptualize > problems that way anymore." I think what he really meant (knowlingly or not) was "the money walks somewhere else". As far as I can say, the kids are just following money. This kind of behaviour is called a tropism. Since this is how the world goes, I am not sure it can be described as bad or good. This is very much like evolution, thanks to which we are living in and are the result of living in, a huge slaughterhouse. The 30cm long centipede hunts bats which evolved long after centipede and long after insects were dominant life forms on a planet. /bin/sh will be used to solve problems in a future, too. Innumerable Unix servers will be sent to the landfill. systemd will grow a hairy-sticky ecosystem of its own, developing pseudo-kernels like pseudo-brains in dinosaur belly. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola@bigfoot.com **