[TUHS] [OT] Re: earliest Unix roff

[Norman Wilson]

Arthur Krewat:

  Which is better, creating a whole new binary to put in /usr/bin to do a 
  single task, or add a flag to cat?

  Which is better, a proliferation of binaries w/standalone source code, 
  or a single code tree that can handle slightly different tasks and save 
  space?

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Which is simpler to write correctly, to debug, and to maintain:
a simple program that does a single task, or a huge single program
with lots of tasks mashed together?

Which is easier to understand and use, individual programs each
with a few options specialized to a particular task, or a monolith
with many more options some of which apply only to one task or
another, others to all?

What are you trying to optimize for?  The speed with which
programmers can churn out yet another featureful utility full
of bugs and corner cases, or the ease with which the end-user
can figure out what tool to use and how to use it?

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON