[COFF] [TUHS] On Bloat and the Idea of Small Specialized Tools

[John P. Linderman]

Marc Rochkind used to advise reading the entire UNIX manual cover to cover
each year. The manual was short enough that it could be done in a day or
two. It was a great way to discover commands and system calls you didn't
use every day, and deepen your understanding of the ones you did use every
day. We were in a center that ran PWB UNIX, and the manual was overseen by
Ted Dolotta, who was a stickler for good writing. I can't imagine trying to
do something similar now. -- jpl

On Fri, May 10, 2024 at 7:23 PM Nevin Liber <nliber at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, May 10, 2024 at 11:37 AM Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
>> The key is that not all "bloat" is the same (really)—or maybe one
>> person's bloat is another person's preference.
>>
>
> A lot of "bloat" comes because our systems really aren't focused on
> "discoverability".
>
> While I probably have used "pr" in the past, I've totally forgotten, the
> name "pr" doesn't really help me understand what it is for, and it's just
> one of 982 files in my /usr/bin directory alone.  How does one discover it?
>
> It's like using "sed" instead of "head": sure, if you already know "sed",
> you don't need "head", but for English speaking folks who know "tail" is
> there, it would be (and was in the old days) surprising and frustrating not
> to have "head".
>
> If I have a command and I want it to do something slightly different, the
> first place I look is to see if there is a command line option for that.  I
> know how to discover that (either --help or the man pages).
>
> GUIs were better at discoverability.  The menu at the top made it easy to
> see (and constantly reinforced) what was possible, at least until we got
> into the era of contextual menus, gestures and force presses.
>
> They aren't perfect.  I get plenty of dialog boxes which have a check box
> for "Do not show this message again" which I don't dare check, because I
> don't know how to bring up whatever choice it wants me to decide on should
> I need to change it in the future.
>
>
> And once you have users/customers, it's hard to get rid of things, because
> they value stability.
> --
>  Nevin ":-)" Liber  <mailto:nl <nevin at eviloverlord.com>iber at gmail.com>
> +1-847-691-1404
>
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