On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 12:39 PM, Jon Steinhart <jon@fourwinds.com> wrote:

I have a similar and maybe even more extreme position. When I was a manager
I placed restrictions on the tools and customizations for members of my team.
My goal was to make sure that any team member could go over to any other team
member's desk and get stuff done.

And I think this loops back to what started some of this threat. The idea of a programmer with 'good taste.'

Rob (and Brian) railed on BSD in cat -v considered harmful and ‘Program Design in the UNIX Environment’ (pdf version, ps version) but the points in it was then and are still now, fresh: What is it that you need to get the job done - to me, that is Doug's "Universal Unix" concept.

When I answer questions on quora about learning Linux and other UNIX derivative, I still point them at their book: The Unix Programming Environment

I would say, if the can login into the system and complete the exercises in UPE without having to make changes, you are pretty close to Doug's "Universal UNIX" environment. And if you can use the tools, without having to think about them and they pretty much are what you rely upon everyday, you are getting close to my ideal of 'good taste.'