Unix doesn't follow the Unix philosophy
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 25th May 2012 14:55 UTC
General Unix James Hague: "But all the little bits of complexity, all those cases where indecision caused one option that probably wasn't even needed in the first place to be replaced by two options, all those bad choices that were never remedied for fear of someone somewhere having to change a line of code... They slowly accreted until it all got out of control, and we got comfortable with systems that were impossible to understand." Counterpoint by John Cook: "Some of the growth in complexity is understandable. It's a lot easier to maintain an orthogonal design when your software isn't being used. Software that gets used becomes less orthogonal and develops diagonal shortcuts." If there's ever been a system in dire need of a complete redesign, it's UNIX and its derivatives. A mess doesn't even begin to describe it (for those already frantically reaching for the comment button, note that this applies to other systems as well).
E-mail Print r 1   111 Comment(s) http://osne.ws/k28
Thread beginning with comment 519494
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Comment by Gone fishing
by Gone fishing on Fri 25th May 2012 21:09 UTC
Gone fishing
Member since:
2006-02-22

Maybe this inconsistency and incomprehensibility is an inevitable product of complexity and evolved complexity.

Using organisms as an analogy on the outside they look neat enough but inside the organization is often a ridiculous mess - no one and his dog would wire the vertebrate eye with the nerves in front to the photo receptors, let alone some of the blood vessels in the neck and thorax of a giraffe.

Things get messed up, it is an inevitable consequence of the way the universe is.

Reply Score: 3

RE: Comment by Gone fishing
by Lennie on Sun 27th May 2012 10:02 in reply to "Comment by Gone fishing"
Lennie Member since:
2007-09-22

You already used the word evolved, I would put it more strongly:

complexity is usually the result of evolution.

When something is designed from scratch and all you need it for is what it was designed for, you'll (be able to) get beautiful designs.

Reply Parent Score: 3

RE: Comment by Gone fishing
by zima on Sun 27th May 2012 18:57 in reply to "Comment by Gone fishing"
zima Member since:
2005-07-06

The typical mammalian teeth are probably one of more frustrating baggages... I'm fairly certain that most of humanity would like to have a new set of teeth every dozen years to two decades, or so.

But no, our rodent-like distant ancestors at some point lost the ability to have more than two sets. And since it didn't matter in their very short lives anyway, didn't put any selective pressure, it stuck - eventually into times when, for some mammalian lineages, lifespans became quite a bit longer (even more frustrating: rodents, the contemporary mammals outwardly & in lifestyle most similar to those ancestors, they managed to bypass it with continuous growth) - by now, even if we'd manage to reinitialize leftovers of gene pathways responsible for further sets, the results would be probably... messy (with how our skulls evolved for 100+ million years without the need to accommodate more than two sets)

Things get messed up, it is an inevitable consequence of the way the universe is.

Damn entropy (and since we already mention things which are very unsettling to some people... ;p http://groups.google.com/group/net.origins/msg/ca73e0fd518a23f8?lnk... )


BTW what's with giraffe? (I'm not familiar with any specific blood vessel weirdness of this one / I'm lazy ;) )

Reply Parent Score: 2

Gone fishing Member since:
2006-02-22

BTW what's with giraffe? (I'm not familiar with any specific blood vessel weirdness of this one / I'm lazy ;) )


I was being lazy too and miss remembering

I was thinking of the Recurrent laryngeal nerve, which starts in the brain goes down the neck goes round the aorta / subclavian artery (in the thorax) then goes all the way up the neck again. A detour of about 4 meters.

A bad bodge by any standards, the kind of thing that happens when things evolve and new features are added

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[2]: Comment by Gone fishing
by kwan_e on Mon 28th May 2012 03:14 in reply to "RE: Comment by Gone fishing"
kwan_e Member since:
2007-02-18

The typical mammalian teeth are probably one of more frustrating baggages... I'm fairly certain that most of humanity would like to have a new set of teeth every dozen years to two decades, or so.


I like to think the reason why humans are so successful is because we were dealt a really crappy hand by natural selection. We have probably the least remarkable mammalian features - we're not strong, we're not fast, we're not fast breeders, we are not huge or tiny, we have average eyes, we have average smelling, we have average ears, we have a bad spine. And it's probably because of these crappy parts that we had to work really hard on cooperation and language and tools which increases intelligence to allow us to overcome our crappy bodies.

Reply Parent Score: 2