Re:A little story about the `yes` Unix command
by Brian_K_White on Thursday July 21, 2022 @06:49AM
(#32177803)
Once the good-enough version has already been written and sitting around for a few decades, you need an excuse not to get around to optimizing it sooner or later.
The maintenance argument isn't a good enough one. It's a factor, just not a strong one.
There is no reason for every tiny bit of something as foundational as the os to just get better and better forever.
The only reason we write things down in the first place, is so that we can do the work once and then refer to it many times without having to re-create it each time. So there is very little argument for keeping a program small and simple like the first version.
Some, but just not much. Because black-boxifying that complexity is what writing (be it a legal document or a program) is for in the first place. Making a more sophisticated better performing version 2 of something is simply using the tools of writing that exist for no other purpose ultimately.
It does go the other way too. Version 3 could be to invest yet more brainpower into figuring out how to get the same performance in fewer operations. And on that day soneone will wonder if it's worth optimizing that when it already works fine and compute resources are infinite. The answer then as ow will be the same "Yes. Of course."
The maintenance argument isn't a good enough one. It's a factor, just not a strong one.
There is no reason for every tiny bit of something as foundational as the os to just get better and better forever.
The only reason we write things down in the first place, is so that we can do the work once and then refer to it many times without having to re-create it each time. So there is very little argument for keeping a program small and simple like the first version.
Some, but just not much. Because black-boxifying that complexity is what writing (be it a legal document or a program) is for in the first place. Making a more sophisticated better performing version 2 of something is simply using the tools of writing that exist for no other purpose ultimately.
It does go the other way too. Version 3 could be to invest yet more brainpower into figuring out how to get the same performance in fewer operations. And on that day soneone will wonder if it's worth optimizing that when it already works fine and compute resources are infinite. The answer then as ow will be the same "Yes. Of course."