Post #2235301
2026-02-01 16:41 UTC
Replies (2)
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@suetanvil@freeradical.zone 2026-02-01 18:23
@athas@freeradical.zone False, except *maybe* for later Forth. Unix was always "do abstraction layers perfectly or not at all". I've seen *vast* quantities of bitching about Unix scripting and it *never* turns into anything better. The best you get is PowerShell which is... a thing. (Yes, I know about nushell; no, I don't want to argue about it.) (And as for Lisp, an army of Lisp weenies is currently tracking you down. I suggest changing your name and running into the wilderness.)
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@millihertz@oldbytes.space 2026-02-01 19:03
@athas@freeradical.zone @suetanvil@freeradical.zone "refusing to solve the difficult problem and realising you can get away with it" is exactly what software engineering is about. a lot of "difficult problems" turn out to be seventeen simple problems in a trenchcoat, and you only need to solve the one that applies to you; conversely, sometimes *over*generalising a difficult problem turns it into a simpler one - there's a couple of examples of that in Thinking Forth the point isn't to shy away from the difficult problem, but not to take it at face value - to prod at it until you're absolutely certain you need to solve exactly all of it.