On October 16, 2022 at 14:18 randy@psg.com (Randy Bush) wrote:
my favorite is
It's perfectly appropriate to be upset. I thought of it in a slightly different way--like a space that we were exploring and, in the early days, we figured out this consistent path through the space: IP, TCP, and so on. What's been happening over the last few years is that the IETF is filling the rest of the space with every alternative approach, not necessarily any better. Every possible alternative is now being written down. And it's not useful. -- Jon Postel
Early unix had a similar philosophical debate. Everything is a simple file (including most devices), make commands which do one thing and do it well so they can be connected together in new ways (an almost prescient view on the ubiquity of multi-cpu/core systems), when in doubt generalize and let the user specialize for their needs, don't try to guess everything your program will be used for. Then we got: POP-QUIZ! Name which letters a-z which aren't options to ls? Granted computing was more data processing than UI back then, but even desktop apps like word processing had this style (e.g., a separate program to format math equations or tables which could be piped into from the general word processing program in a pipeline, and another to do final formatting for the printing device.) -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*