Re:The growth of command line options, 1979-Present (2020)
by MisterTea on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @04:06PM
(#29571639)
> He just explains that the philosophy is not consistently followed, but he is not unhappy with it.
Which is exactly the reason for the glut of command line options.
A great example of following Unix philosophy using a more recent example is the ssh client on plan 9. It is split into three separate programs each with their own man page: ssh(1) for terminal access, sshfs(4) for mounting a remote file tree, and sshnet(4) which imports a remote machines tcp stack. Keep it simple, stupid.
That quote from the Uncomfortable Truths article is strange because Dan Luu doesn't explain that "it doesn't actually work well". He just explains that the philosophy is not consistently followed, but he is not unhappy with it.