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

[Brantley Coile]

I'm so grateful that we are able to work using Plan 9. 

aztec% wc -l /sys/src/cmd/p.c
     90 /sys/src/cmd/p.c
aztec% 

So the size of Plan 9's paginator's source code is 208 lines smaller than the help for that paginator. And it has no options.

Just say'n.

bwc

> On May 18, 2024, at 2:07 PM, Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> 
> I just revisited this ironic echo of Mies van der Rohe's aphorism, "Less is more".
>        % less --help | wc
>       298
> Last time I looked, the line count was about 220. Bloat is self-catalyzing. 
> 
> What prompted me to look was another disheartening discovery. The "small special tool" Gnu diff has a 95-page manual!  And it doesn't cover the option I was looking up (-h). To be fair, the manual includes related programs like diff3(1), sdiff(1) and patch(1), but the original manual for each fit on one page.
> 
> Doug