bewareofdog's comments

It's an interesting point about not ever being able to escape your school mates. With Facebook, they can track you down after you graduate easily. That is a totally new thing.

Is it a good thing?

Sure, we get connectedness. But do you really want to stay connected to _everyone_? Facebook will kill privacy for these kids if we do not do something. They will never be able to "escape their past" in the way that earlier generations could. That seems unfair.

Food for thought.

The thing is that simplicity could be right under a programmer's nose, already done, and they will pass right over it. They will start building something new when a simple solution already exists for what they are trying to do.

Some people just want to write code. No matter if it needs to be written or not. It's like nervous energy.

The important question that we fail to address in arguments about simplicity is "What is it you are trying to do?"

Most times, it's a simple thing. Or it's a number of different things, each of them simple. But the programmer cannot see it that way. He envisions something else. He envisions a large project. He fires up his "IDE". We're doomed, heading for complexity from the start.

What if the simple programs are boring? What if they are short? What then? The programer is itching to code something, anything. He's going to do it. He will produce something complex and unleash it upon the world.

He will have to use "features" to sell his work. (Chances are it will be very similar to other existing programs.) As such, his program can never just do one thing. It must do many things. It must have features. Because that is the only way he can convince people to try it.

Some users will bite. Success! Or is it? This how we end up with an overly complex monstrosity.

What if programming is really a boring task of writing simple, efficient, reliable programs? Then what?

We'd be nowhere without UNIX. And it's a simple boring (well, not to me) system. There is no GUI. But it works. Take some time to process that.

You do not need to create simplicity. (All due respect to STEPS.) You simply need to wake up and discover it. It's running your system. It's right underneath your nose.

Discover, not create.

"crazy hard-core shit"

This is the problem. When basic understanding of a system (e.g. I/O) is viewed as "crazy hard-core shit" we are in trouble.

You do not even need ls in today's UNIX.

Globbing, printf, echo and stat can do it all.

And if necessary it's easy for the user to write her own custom utilities for displaying file or directory information from the stat struct as long as she is provided with good documentation for the standard C functions.

If you don't know how to do these things then you need to learn. And I say that as a dumb end user who can do things in UNIX that apparently most programmers of today cannot or will not because it's "too hard".

To me, learning all these high level scripting languages is crazy hard core shit. It would take me forever. They are large and complex.

Meanwhile I can do things the short, simple way. And learn about "crazy hard-core shit" like basic I/O at the same time.

Is this why people sometimes will say they are "banging their head against the wall" trying to come up with a solution?

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