Post #3801817
2026-07-14 06:03 UTC
"Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface."
-- Doug McIlroy, 1964
Replies (3)
-
@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange 2026-07-14 07:40
@fribbledom@mastodon.social I disagree on the last part because it was very much a product of its time: text was about the only thing computers could handle back then. The input was a typewriter, the output was printout. Today, even text isn’t just text. It’s text in some encoding (hopefully Unicode, but still not guaranteed). And it may have additional markup (HTML, RTF, or something else). It may want to refer to other out-of-line resources, such as images and a unidirectional channel is not great for this.
-
@esoteric_programmer@social.stealthy.club 2026-07-14 08:28
@fribbledom@mastodon.social I would replace text streams with structured data, but otherwise hell yeah
-
@raven@fedi.raventhemaker.com 2026-07-14 11:48
@fribbledom@mastodon.social We have forgotten the faces of our fathers.