FYI: The Unix philosophy

[Kevin D. Clark]

Lloyd Kvam writes:

> I had the need to write some Perl code recently which forced me to pull
> out "Learning Perl" from the bookshelf.  Larry Wall wrote a very
> entertaining forward that takes issue with some of these principles.

I dunno.  I think that if you were to ask lwall the specific question
(for example) "is small beautiful?" he'd say that in all likelyhood
small is more likely to be beautiful than big.

For example, "patch" (created by lwall) is small and beautiful in its
own way.  patch has not evolved into a full-blown version control
system, much to everybody's relief.  But, again, patch is beautiful in
its own way.

Of course, the thing that lwall is most famous for is Perl, and in a
certain light you can see that the design for Perl was most definitely
*not* "small is beautiful" and "make each program do one thing well".
I feel confident when I surmise that lwall would say that this is OK
too, because in this case he was trying to create a useful general
purpose programming language (not a "tool) that could accomplish tasks
that he couldn't even envision at the time he created the language.
If he had wanted to create a language that could have only done one
thing well, I guess he could have created another PROLOG or something.

I would argue that the Unix Philosophy has room in it for both "patch"
and "Perl".  "patch" makes it in easily, whereas Perl knocked down one
of the walls but many people don't mind because of its usefulness.  If
something isn't useful it is most decidedly not part of this mindset.

> I think the need for AWK/Sed crib sheets argues that the tools we've
> traditionally used for piping text might benefit from some fresh
> insights.

I use crib sheets for various things, actually.  My tiny little brain
can only remember so many things; hence my notes.  I use
sh/sed/awk/patch/Perl quite a bit because they help me get my job
done.

Just another Perl hacker,

--kevin
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