Post #2235302

2026-02-01 18:23 UTC

@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.)

Replies (3)

@bunny@mk.absturztau.be 2026-02-01 19:29

@suetanvil@freeradical.zone @athas@freeradical.zone Unix did many bad abstractions. In fact you would be hard pressed to find any that is good from the point of view of what we know today. But that's not the point. The point is that the industry is rotten when in 40 years it cannot move on from those bad abstractions. And as you pointed out people do know how to solve many of the problems that unix tried to solve in a better way. The problem is industry inertia. People get certifications for using the old cruft, it's very very hard to find a job that involves making something new :bunhdsad:

Open ##2235303
@tux0r@layer8.space 2026-02-01 19:32

@suetanvil@freeradical.zone @athas@freeradical.zone > Unix was always "do abstraction layers perfectly or not at all". That's what Plan 9 did because Unix very famously did *not*.

Open ##2235304
@aspragg@ohai.social 2026-02-01 22:37

@suetanvil@freeradical.zone @athas@freeradical.zone I feel obliged to link to the classic essay "The Rise of Worse Is Better" (1991) here, which argues that C and Unix succeeded because they did not solve many problems perfectly https://dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html

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