[aklug] Re: Slackware says "I told you so!"

On 02/24/11 15:25, Arthur Corliss wrote:
> Guys:
>
> http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/3339907908/the-cognitive-style-of-unix
>
> Doesn't have anything directly to do with Slack, but from my almost decade
> old recollection of Slack this is a subconscious driver in the philosophy of
> distro design. End sum, should be an amusing tidbit to help spur on the
> distro wars. :-)
>
> If that doesn't grab you this can also be easily applied to the editor wars,
> showing why vi(m) is superior to emacs/pico/nano/whatever. >:->
>
> In terms of a general concept, I buy into this line of reasoning. You
> GUI-types are crippling your brains. ;-) You are now free to flame...
>
> --Arthur Corliss
> Live Free or Die
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I enjoyed the article. Another way to put it: If you understand how
something works, you are going to be better working with it. Unix forces
you to understand how it works, so you will be able to accomplish more
and better things with it than you would with operating systems that
take the opposite approach.

However, it didn't address more fundamental issues: Is it necessarily a
good thing for a person to be required to learn how his software works
in order to benefit from it? For example: a person drives a car to work
every day, but he doesn't understand how internal combustion engines
work. Does that necessarily mean he is dumb? Maybe it just isn't his
area of expertise. Maybe he doesn't have the time to learn how cars work.

You imply vim is "superior" to pico, nano, et cetera. But your unstated
assumption was that "superior" means "I can accomplish a whole lot more
with it than with other editors because I know what I'm doing." But when
my buddy at work has to spend 20 minutes looking through a Linux
reference book to figure out how to edit two lines in a config file
using vim, it doesn't seem very "superior" to him.

My answer to my own question is: yes, ultimately it is always better to
thoroughly understand any framework you use. But getting from point A to
point B is a bit more challenging in the real world. Which is why, last
time I checked, Ubuntu is still more popular than Slackware and Gentoo
combined, even though they are clearly "superior" distros.

-- 
frigidcode.com
theologa.indicium.us
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