25 Jan
2021
25 Jan
'21
11:10 a.m.
I'm writing about my 5 favorite unix design principles on my blog this
week, and it got me wondering what others' favorite unix design principles
are? For reference, mine are:
- Rule of Separation (from TAOUP <http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/>
)
- Let the Machine Do the Dirty Work (from Elements of Programming Style)
- Rule of Silence (from TAOUP <http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/>)
- Data Dominates (Rob Pike #5)
- The SPOT (Single Point of Truth) Rule (from TAOUP
<http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/>)
Tyler
25 Jan
25 Jan
12:32 p.m.
On Mon, 25 Jan 2021, Tyler Adams wrote:
I'm writing about my 5 favorite unix design
principles on my blog this
week, and it got me wondering what others' favorite unix design principles
are? For reference, mine are:
- Rule of Separation (from TAOUP <http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/>
)
- Let the Machine Do the Dirty Work (from Elements of Programming Style)
- Rule of Silence (from TAOUP <http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/>)
- Data Dominates (Rob Pike #5)
- The SPOT (Single Point of Truth) Rule (from TAOUP
<http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/>)
Tyler
1. Pipes
2. Text as the preferred format for input and output
3. 'Most everything as a file
4. The idea of simple tools that are optimized for a single task
5. A powerful scripting language built into the system that, combined with
1-4, makes writing new tools heaps easier.
-uso.
26 Jan
26 Jan
2:06 a.m.
It might be interesting to compare your final list with the two lists in
the 1978 special issue of the BSTJ--one in the Foreword, the other in the
revised version of the Ritchi/Thompson article from the CACM. How have
perceptions or values changed over time?
Doug
On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 7:32 AM Steve Nickolas <usotsuki(a)buric.co> wrote:
On Mon, 25 Jan 2021, Tyler Adams wrote:
I'm writing about my 5 favorite unix design
principles on my blog this
week, and it got me wondering what others' favorite unix design
principles
are? For reference, mine are:
- Rule of Separation (from TAOUP <
http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/>
)
- Let the Machine Do the Dirty Work (from Elements of Programming Style)
- Rule of Silence (from TAOUP <http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/
)
- Data Dominates (Rob Pike #5)
- The SPOT (Single Point of Truth) Rule (from TAOUP
<http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/>)
Tyler
1. Pipes
2. Text as the preferred format for input and output
3. 'Most everything as a file
4. The idea of simple tools that are optimized for a single task
5. A powerful scripting language built into the system that, combined with
1-4, makes writing new tools heaps easier.
-uso.
2:53 a.m.
On Mon, 25 Jan 2021, M Douglas McIlroy wrote:
It might be interesting to compare your final list
with the two lists in
the 1978 special issue of the BSTJ--one in the Foreword, the other in the
revised version of the Ritchi/Thompson article from the CACM. How have
perceptions or values changed over time?
Doug
Funny thing is I came into *x (Solaris, and then Linux) relatively late -
ca. 1997, after I had been using MS-DOS and ProDOS for years, which were
the operating systems I compared it to.
It was because MS-DOS had adopted ideas from Xenix that *x was easier to
acclimate to than other OSes I'd used.
-uso.
10:22 a.m.
Looking at the 1978 list, the last one really stands out:
"Use tools in preference to unskilled help to lighten a programming task"
-- The concept of unskilled help for a programming task...doesn't really
exist in 2020. The only special case is doing unskilled labor yourself.
What unskilled tasks did people used to do back in the day?
Tyler
On Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 4:07 AM M Douglas McIlroy <
m.douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> wrote:
It might be interesting to compare your final list
with the two lists in
the 1978 special issue of the BSTJ--one in the Foreword, the other in the
revised version of the Ritchi/Thompson article from the CACM. How have
perceptions or values changed over time?
Doug
On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 7:32 AM Steve Nickolas <usotsuki(a)buric.co> wrote:
On Mon, 25 Jan 2021, Tyler Adams wrote:
I'm writing about my 5 favorite unix design
principles on my blog this
week, and it got me wondering what others' favorite unix design
principles
are? For reference, mine are:
- Rule of Separation (from TAOUP <
http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/>
)
- Let the Machine Do the Dirty Work (from Elements of Programming Style)
- Rule of Silence (from TAOUP <
http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/>)
- Data Dominates (Rob Pike #5)
- The SPOT (Single Point of Truth) Rule (from TAOUP
<http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/>)
Tyler
1. Pipes
2. Text as the preferred format for input and output
3. 'Most everything as a file
4. The idea of simple tools that are optimized for a single task
5. A powerful scripting language built into the system that, combined
with
1-4, makes writing new tools heaps easier.
-uso.
12:26 p.m.
On Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 5:24 AM Tyler Adams <coppero1237(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Looking at the 1978 list, the last one really stands
out:
"Use tools in preference to unskilled help to lighten a programming task"
-- The concept of unskilled help for a programming task...doesn't really
exist in 2020. The only special case is doing unskilled labor yourself.
What unskilled tasks did people used to do back in the day?
Tyler
>
>>
Drifting far off topic, but when I was programming part time for the MIT
administration in the late 60's, we wrote a small language for generating
reports from tape input. It did things like reading a record ahead, so it
could detect the last and first records having some (presumably sorted)
value, making it easy to do headers and summaries. Many report requests
from assorted administrative offices could be handled by our operators, who
had no formal programming experience. Occasionally they'd get bitten by a
request like "Give me a count of freshman and sophomores in course 18" and
they'd do the equivalent of "class == freshmen && class ==
sophomore",
paralleling the spoken request, and then wonder why nothing got selected.
All in all, though, it took a huge load off the skilled programmers, and
reduced the time to respond to simple requests. When I joined the Labs in
1973, we had no operators, no administrative report requests, and most
co-workers were proficient programmers. But the administrative work
environment at MIT was more representative of "the real world" than the
Labs.
3:23 p.m.
On Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 5:23 AM Tyler Adams <coppero1237(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Looking at the 1978 list, the last one really stands
out:
"Use tools in preference to unskilled help to lighten a programming task"
-- The concept of unskilled help for a programming task...doesn't really
exist in 2020. The only special case is doing unskilled labor yourself.
What unskilled tasks did people used to do back in the day?
Tyler
I've often wondered if this is the source of the infamous putdown: When you
operate in such or such manner,* "you could/should be replaced with a shell
script."*
ᐧ
4 p.m.
Den tis 26 jan. 2021 kl 16:24 skrev Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com>om>:
On Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 5:23 AM Tyler Adams <coppero1237(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The version I've heard is even "... a very small shell script".
Niklas
Looking at the 1978 list, the last one really
stands out:
"Use tools in preference to unskilled help to lighten a programming task"
-- The concept of unskilled help for a programming task...doesn't really
exist in 2020. The only special case is doing unskilled labor yourself.
What unskilled tasks did people used to do back in the day?
Tyler
I've often wondered if this is the source of the infamous putdown: When
you operate in such or such manner,* "you could/should be replaced with a
shell script."*
ᐧ
4:13 p.m.
To be fair I've made a decent career spanning five calendar decades so far
out of replacing the thing I started out doing with a shell script (in
recent decades, more often Perl, then Python), so it's not the _worst_ job
advice....
On Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 9:01 AM Niklas Karlsson <nikke.karlsson(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Den tis 26 jan. 2021 kl 16:24 skrev Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com>om>:
On Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 5:23 AM Tyler Adams <coppero1237(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
The version I've heard is even "... a very small shell script".
Niklas
Looking at the 1978 list, the last one really
stands out:
"Use tools in preference to unskilled help to lighten a programming
task" -- The concept of unskilled help for a programming task...doesn't
really exist in 2020. The only special case is doing unskilled labor
yourself. What unskilled tasks did people used to do back in the day?
Tyler
I've often wondered if this is the source of the infamous putdown: When
you operate in such or such manner,* "you could/should be replaced with
a shell script."*
ᐧ
1183
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8 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
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Adam Thornton -
Clem Cole -
John P. Linderman -
M Douglas McIlroy -
Niklas Karlsson -
Steve Nickolas -
Tyler Adams