[TUHS] Version 256 of systemd boasts '42% less Unix philosophy' The Register

[Larry McVoy]

On Sun, Jun 16, 2024 at 04:34:34PM -0700, Luther Johnson wrote:
> I think there's a parallel from the Unix/Linux systems that we think of
> as more Unix-like, to the cars and airplanes and other machines of that
> and earlier eras. It used to be that part of the design of a system,
> alongside its operation, was the idea of normal, regular maintenance.
> The system could be pretty simple, but there was some maintenance and
> wearable parts replacement required. It was expected that there was an
> administrator or mechanic checking in once in a while to keep things
> tuned and in "good repair". This worked well, as long as people accepted
> this responsibility as part of the deal.
> 
> Now it seems like people want everything done for them automatically,
> and not to have to know anything about the systems they are using. They
> want the systems to be smarter so they don't have to know as much. It's
> sort of like when the private airplane industry tried to engineer any
> skill required on the part of the pilot, out of the airplane. The
> results were not good. Planes became more complex, with more points of
> failure, and pilots did not know how to react to unexpected situations.
> I see this happening with our computer systems, and the people using
> them now, too. Of course there's a reasonable middle ground, but I think
> we've gone a little too far making things "easy", and in fact it's not
> easier at all, we're just fiddling in a different way, often through
> random trial and error, it all seems horribly indirect, opaque, and
> irrational, to support some programmer's idea somewhere, of some perfect
> abstraction.
> 
> For example: CMake vs. just learning how to write makefiles properly.
> You fiddle with CMake and you never really know why it does what it
> does, especially from one version to the next, "but you don't have to
> write makefiles".

I could not agree more with this post, all of it, but especially the 
Cmake stuff.  Writing Makefiles isn't that hard, if you are a programmer
and can't do that, how good of a programmer are you?  And is it really
easier to learn shiny-new-make-replacement-du-jour every year?