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).
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Hypnos
Member since:
2008-11-19

The difficulty in learning Japanese vocabulary is mostly limited to learning the kanji, which are recycled to form different compound words. Once you know their Japanese and Chinese readings it's not hard to get the pronunciations of even technical words.

But learning kanji is quite a chore.

Reply Parent Score: 2

Neolander Member since:
2010-03-08

Sou desu ka...

Reply Parent Score: 1

shinkou Member since:
2011-03-24

Let alone the onomatopoeia and mimetic words, as a foreigner who have been trying to master the language here in Japan, I can assure you that Japanese reading of kanjis are not 100% comprehensible. It's true even to the natives, especially for people's name nowadays.

By the way, technical words nowadays are usually in katakana, not kanji, since most of them are loan words from other languages.

Reply Parent Score: 1

Hypnos Member since:
2008-11-19

While it's true that kanji names have obscure readings, surely English wins on this count -- it's almost impossible to work out the pronunciations of, say, American names from their spellings. Same is true of place names in England.

Technical words from Meiji era, such as in medicine and basic sciences, seem quite sensible. It does seem true that modern technical words, such as for computing, are in katakana, or simply English. This adds complexity as one must basically learn a second language.

Reply Parent Score: 2