On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 at 10:07, J Martin Rushton < martinrushton56 at btinternet.com> wrote: > > > On 25/02/2021 14:49, Stephen John Smoogen wrote: > > > > > > On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 at 09:13, J Martin Rushton via CentOS > > <centos at centos.org <mailto:centos at centos.org>> wrote: > > > > > > > > On 25/02/2021 13:37, Stephen John Smoogen wrote: > > > > I was recently looking at Raymond's book "The Art of UNIX > Programming" > > from 2003. He, along with contributors Thompson (inventor of UNIX), > > Kernigham (C and AWK), Korn and others of that callibre, espouse > > creating "little tools" that do one job reliably and well. The > > likes of > > Gnome or systemd certainly would never fit into this philosophy. I > > really think we have lost a lot of maintainability and ease of > > management over the last 20 years as applications are stretched to do > > ever more. > > > > > > Maybe but everytime someone says "I think these are too complex" they > > then turn around and say "but I really need this to do this one more > > thing." Also the complexity of tools is generational. The oldschool > > 1970's Unix people were screaming that the 1980's software was too > > complex because various flags had been added to central commands. The > > 1980's people complained that even early Linux was too complex because > > it had so much more software that depended on each other. And so forth. > > > > In the X11 world, there were as many people saying FVWM was way too > > complex when twm was all you needed and it was making software too hard > > to build. BUT could you get twm to work on our new monitor which has a > > different view screen feature that made the fonts look like crap. > > > > The counter argument I heard from a 1970's Unix era person was "Software > > gets more complicated over time as we find that more problems need to be > > solved. You either keep up with it, or get out of software." He was > > working in software until his death a short while ago in his 80's. > > > > -- > > J Martin Rushton MBCS > > _______________________________________________ > > CentOS mailing list > > CentOS at centos.org <mailto:CentOS at centos.org> > > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos > > <https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos> > > > > > > > > -- > > Stephen J Smoogen. > > > The irony being that moving to UNIX I had it drummed into me that the > one tool-one job ethos was a great advance upon the rigidly defined and > integrated monolith of VMS. Oh, and that was in the 1990s. > -- > J Martin Rushton MBCS > And everyone I worked with told me that Unix was a poor reinvention of TSX-11 where you could get real work done. But since VMS came out over a decade after Unix, I can't say Unix is an advance over VMS. In any case this is devolving into the 4 Yorkshiremen skit so I am done here. -- Stephen J Smoogen.