On 10/4/19 10:40 AM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
My impression is younger generation doesn't value rules that
programmers were following 2-3 decades ago. One of which is:
Do not make any changes [in the program] unless they are absolutely
necessary.
I have in the past agreed with this assessment more than once. And I
_am_ somewhat of an old hand at this, having run Unix and Unix-like
systems for a bit over 30 years.
The fact of the matter is that, even though some of the old ways work
just fine and don't need to be changed, many more times I've seen that,
if the old way was a kludge to begin with, maybe there really is a
better way to do it. Take the transition from horse and buggy to
automobile for instance. Iron rim tires work just great for the buggy,
not so great for the automobile; a change had to be made in an old
technology (the wheel) to meet the needs of the new automobile. Lots of
wheelwrights probably fought that change, too.
I've seen the old ways, and there are more kludges out there than some
would like to admit. (obOldWayRef: article on 'the kluge' from the 1966
Datamation book 'Faith, Hope, and Parity.') Just remember: the old ways
back then was punch card and batch; what do you mean you want more than
one person to use such an expensive thing as a computer live, wasting
its valuable time? Many seem to forget just how subversive Unix was
back in the day relative the the old ways.
...
Yet one more thing is: building superstructure on top of what actually
works.
The definition of what works can and does change over time. Sure, an
iron rim wheel can work for the new automobile, but the basic change in
what the wheel needed to do (with buggy the wheel doesn't need to
provide good traction, that's what hooves are for, and narrow and smooth
work best; with the automobile all of a sudden the drive wheels need to
provide traction, and even though the iron-rim wheel still works after a
fashion on smooth ground, there is a better way to do it). I can just
hear the old-school wheelwrights saying "well, if it gets stuck in the
mud then just don't go in the mud!" or "why would anyone want to go
faster than the horse-drawn buggy could?" or "why would you need to turn
that quickly and at that speed?" or "why in the world would you want
brakes to stop you that quickly?" and the list goes on.....
I _am_ old-school in thought, but I do consciously make the effort to
understand the newer reasoning, rather than be the greybeard that
constantly talks about how I did it in the old days. Heh, in the old
days I made it work with K&R C, 1MB of RAM, and an 8MHz CPU.... and I
griped about the misfeatures then!.....
Today, I'm doing things with containers, virtualization, dynamic load
balancing, software-defined infrastructure/IaaS, etc that the old ways
simply cannot handle. NetworkManager/systemd/etc in CentOS are far from
perfect, but at least they're trying to solve the newer problems that
the old ways in many cases simply cannot.
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