From: Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu>
To: TUHS main list <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] Re: On Bloat and the Idea of Small Specialized Tools
Date: Sat, 18 May 2024 14:07:38 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAKH6PiXaYGEUmVFRX99eM6s3+nTJrbVvkuBRa-Awhhd69xzJrg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
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I just revisited this ironic echo of Mies van der Rohe's aphorism, "Less is
more".
% less --help | wc
298
Last time I looked, the line count was about 220. Bloat is self-catalyzing.
What prompted me to look was another disheartening discovery. The "small
special tool" Gnu diff has a 95-page manual! And it doesn't cover the
option I was looking up (-h). To be fair, the manual includes related
programs like diff3(1), sdiff(1) and patch(1), but the original manual for
each fit on one page.
Doug
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next reply other threads:[~2024-05-18 18:08 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 17+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2024-05-18 18:07 Douglas McIlroy [this message]
2024-05-18 18:13 ` Brantley Coile
2024-05-18 18:18 ` Larry McVoy
2024-05-18 18:52 ` Clem Cole
2024-05-18 19:19 ` Luther Johnson
2024-05-18 20:12 ` segaloco via TUHS
2024-05-18 19:32 ` Stuff Received
2024-05-18 18:22 ` Ralph Corderoy
2024-05-19 8:58 ` [TUHS] The 'usage: ...' message. (Was: On Bloat...) Ralph Corderoy
2024-05-18 18:31 ` [TUHS] Re: On Bloat and the Idea of Small Specialized Tools Peter Weinberger (温博格) via TUHS
2024-05-18 20:33 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2024-05-19 8:39 ` Marc Rochkind
2024-05-20 6:07 ` Adam Thornton
2024-05-20 15:43 ` [TUHS] Documentation (was On Bloat and the Idea of Small Specialized Tools) Paul Winalski
2024-05-20 16:37 ` [TUHS] " Andrew Hume
2024-05-20 18:38 ` Yeechang Lee
2024-05-20 19:27 ` Phil Budne
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