Amen Doug.

On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 11:36 PM M Douglas McIlroy <
m.douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:

> To paraphrase John Cocke (speaking about Fortran): one must understand
> that Unix commands are not a logical language. They are a natural
> language--in the sense that they developed by organic evolution, not
> "intelligent design".
>
But I offer a suggestion that another dimension that should be forgotten in
time scale and the economics within.

When things evolve they do so on different clocks that are not
necessarily linear.   *i.e. *what was 'better' (winning) today, but might
not be considered so tomorrow, however could yet prove otherwise sometime
later.  I use programming languages as a great example...   There was a
huge C vs Pascal debate, that C 'won' - but I've always said the rise of
C++ came from the Pascal folks that could say "C didn't win."  From the
ashes of C++ we have Java, Go, and Rust.

My point is that   "intelligent design" doesn't necessarily guarantee
goodness or for that matter,complete logical thinking.

My own take on this is what I call "Cole's Law"   *Simple economics always
beats sophisticated architecture.*
What you call *organic evolution* is what I think of what makes the *best
economic sense* for the user and that is a function of the time scale and
available resources at the time of creation/deployment.

Clem