[COFF] [TUHS] Re: Generational development [was Re: Re: Early GUI on Linux]

[Dan Cross]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 5:06 PM KenUnix <ken.unix.guy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Have they not heard of common sense? Whenever I get something from git I look through it to
> check for something suspicious before using it and then and only then do I do make install.

Up to what size? What about the dependencies? How about the compiler
that compiles it all?

I have a copy of the Linux kernel I checked out on my machine; it's
many millions of lines of code; sorry, I haven't read all of that. I
often install things using the operating system's package manager; I
haven't read through all that code, either. Life's too short as it is!

> And today's cookie cutter approach to writing software means they are not learning anything
> but copy paste. Where's the innovation?

I imagine that when people made the switch from programming in machine
code to symbolic assemblers, and then again from assembler to
higher-level languages (FORTRAN! COBOL! PL/I!). And so on.

Consider that, perhaps, the innovation is in how those things are all
combined to do something useful for users. My ability to search, read
documents, listen to music, watch real-time video, etc, is way beyond
anything I could do on the machines of the early 90s.

Not everything that the kids do these days is for the better, but not
everything is terrible, either. This list, and TUHS, bluntly, too
often makes the mistake of assuming that it is. Innovation didn't stop
in 1989.

        - Dan C.

> On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 4:22 PM Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> [COFF]
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 4:16 PM Chet Ramey <chet.ramey at case.edu> wrote:
>> > On 2/27/23 4:01 PM, segaloco wrote:
>> > > The official Rust book lists a blind script grab from a website piped into a shell as their "official" install mechanism.
>> >
>> > Well, I suppose if it's from a trustworthy source...
>> >
>> > (Sorry, my eyes rolled so hard they're bouncing on the floor right now.)
>>
>> I find this a little odd. If I go back to O'Reilly books from the
>> early 90s, there was advice to do all sorts of suspect things in them,
>> such as fetching random bits of pieces from random FTP servers (or
>> even using email fetch tarballs [!!]). Or downloading shell archives
>> from USENET.
>>
>> And of course you _can_ download the script and read through it if you want.
>>
>> And no one forces anyone to use `rustup`. Most vendors ship some
>> version of Rust through their package management system these days.
>>
>>         - Dan C.
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> JOB TERMINATED
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