"That philosophy was great, but hasn’t survived into the Web age."
As one who still writes shell scripts for my work that do such a thing, and programs, too, I disagree as every Unix and BSD coder I know still does these things. It still serves us very well; far better than the glut of so-called package managers that pretend they can do better than 'make'.
I chalk a large portion of this up to those creating web pages without any real programming knowledge, training or background. Those who only know how to cut/past/npm everything they do. These are the same who think Unix is old and not modern.
I took an interview with a small company yesterday. There the creative director asked me what tools I knew and spewed out everything but the kitchen sink that they use. I was aware of all of them but questioned why he needed any of them.
You see, I've been running a web dev company for 11 years and have never found an advantage to any of it. He asked how we survived without npm or bower or etc. but, when I asked him if he knew how to write a Makefile, he didn't even know what it was or what it did.
A lot of the tools we use are things we built up over time ... or last week. Today's "modern" tools may be "instant on" for those who can't write a Makefile either but that's a fault and not a feature. If you need npm or bower to manager these things then what happens when something breaks, goes away, or becomes unsupported?
I stuck with npm and bower cause, when I tried to write about Angular and other things it got too long winded.
One of my points is, all the tools you need are already built into any Unix/BSD system so why look elsewhere? Those who do are only looking for quick fixes, as I pointed out earlier, and not interested in the science behind it. Creatives who want to build a web site but have no interest in the technology. They can get it to work, eventually, but "it works" is good enough.
No it's not. That's why smart companies hire mine.
Part of my comment was about his statement that the Unix philosophy is something of the past, which is false. Parts of the rest of my comment dealt with what he said about the plethora of "one size fits all" tools people are using now instead of the simple tools.
Because it's really convenient to be able to make a note on your phone or tablet, then access it and make additional post-meeting notes shortly thereafter, on a laptop, all in the same interface (so you have the same features, or at least a set of common features).
That's just one, assuming you never want formatting, tables, pictures, etc.
> Because it's really convenient to be able to make a note on your phone or tablet, then access it and make additional post-meeting notes shortly thereafter, on a laptop, all in the same interface (so you have the same features, or at least a set of common features).
That's why I personally want emacs on my phone and tablet. I don't know yet the best way to expose its functionality with a touch interface, but it's still, hands-down the best way to edit information.
Maybe something where a tap in the minibar offers some sort of helm- or ido-like command-picking mode, and with taps on the side to enable quick execution of text-editing commands? I dunno, really.
> That's just one, assuming you never want formatting, tables, pictures, etc.
Emacs can handle formatting, tables and pictures if you want.
It's cool, but I always found such things to be cargo-culting and going in the completly wrong direction. You don't want to make a web shell, you want to use normal shell for web.
For a proper "Web UNIX" we need:
- websites talking in structured data (not just plain text)
- less propertiary bullshit (hint: keep sales & marketing people away from APIs)
- ability to conveniently pipe them together anywhere (not on a third-party, complexity-hiding, feature-limiting site like IFTTT)
When I can start typing things like these in my own, local shell:
I believe they are putting forth the case that the kind of developer that doesn't make Unix-like tools, doesn't use Unix-like tools. And that this issue is not a case of everyone doing things shitty (not making things Unix-like), but that it is the god damn creatives making all this bad software. These fucking people don't appreciate the art of programming, and think software is about the destination and not the journey. That's my take anyway.
> Unix has pipes, which make it easy to build complex applications from chains of simpler commands. On the Web, nobody may know you’re a dog, but we don’t have pipes, either. [emphasis mine]
It is explicitly lamenting the complexity of web-based applications as opposed to other kinds of applications. If you disagree that that's the premise, then you and I are living in rather distinct universes.
Ironically, just this week I had several cases of attempting to install Python modules with pip, and every error that came up had to do with compiling parts. Then I used apt-get to install binary packages and they all installed just fine, in 1/10 the time.
As one who still writes shell scripts for my work that do such a thing, and programs, too, I disagree as every Unix and BSD coder I know still does these things. It still serves us very well; far better than the glut of so-called package managers that pretend they can do better than 'make'.
I chalk a large portion of this up to those creating web pages without any real programming knowledge, training or background. Those who only know how to cut/past/npm everything they do. These are the same who think Unix is old and not modern.
I took an interview with a small company yesterday. There the creative director asked me what tools I knew and spewed out everything but the kitchen sink that they use. I was aware of all of them but questioned why he needed any of them.
You see, I've been running a web dev company for 11 years and have never found an advantage to any of it. He asked how we survived without npm or bower or etc. but, when I asked him if he knew how to write a Makefile, he didn't even know what it was or what it did.
A lot of the tools we use are things we built up over time ... or last week. Today's "modern" tools may be "instant on" for those who can't write a Makefile either but that's a fault and not a feature. If you need npm or bower to manager these things then what happens when something breaks, goes away, or becomes unsupported?
I stuck with npm and bower cause, when I tried to write about Angular and other things it got too long winded.
One of my points is, all the tools you need are already built into any Unix/BSD system so why look elsewhere? Those who do are only looking for quick fixes, as I pointed out earlier, and not interested in the science behind it. Creatives who want to build a web site but have no interest in the technology. They can get it to work, eventually, but "it works" is good enough.
No it's not. That's why smart companies hire mine.