11 May
2024
11 May
'24
6:51 p.m.
Marc Rochkind used to advise reading the entire UNIX manual cover to cover
each year. The manual was short enough that it could be done in a day or
two. It was a great way to discover commands and system calls you didn't
use every day, and deepen your understanding of the ones you did use every
day. We were in a center that ran PWB UNIX, and the manual was overseen by
Ted Dolotta, who was a stickler for good writing. I can't imagine trying to
do something similar now. -- jpl
On Fri, May 10, 2024 at 7:23 PM Nevin Liber <nliber(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, May 10, 2024 at 11:37 AM Clem Cole
<clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
The key is that not all "bloat" is the
same (really)—or maybe one
person's bloat is another person's preference.
A lot of "bloat" comes because our systems really aren't focused on
"discoverability".
While I probably have used "pr" in the past, I've totally forgotten, the
name "pr" doesn't really help me understand what it is for, and it's
just
one of 982 files in my /usr/bin directory alone. How does one discover it?
It's like using "sed" instead of "head": sure, if you already
know "sed",
you don't need "head", but for English speaking folks who know
"tail" is
there, it would be (and was in the old days) surprising and frustrating not
to have "head".
If I have a command and I want it to do something slightly different, the
first place I look is to see if there is a command line option for that. I
know how to discover that (either --help or the man pages).
GUIs were better at discoverability. The menu at the top made it easy to
see (and constantly reinforced) what was possible, at least until we got
into the era of contextual menus, gestures and force presses.
They aren't perfect. I get plenty of dialog boxes which have a check box
for "Do not show this message again" which I don't dare check, because I
don't know how to bring up whatever choice it wants me to decide on should
I need to change it in the future.
And once you have users/customers, it's hard to get rid of things, because
they value stability.
--
Nevin ":-)" Liber <mailto:nl
<nevin@eviloverlord.com>iber@gmail.com>
+1-847-691-1404