http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/tree/src/true...
I think the argument can be made that command lines tools shouldn't provide versioning and help text at all - leave it up to the manual pages.
I also think there should be another data section in each command-line program that contains an abstract layout of a dialog for entering arguments, as was customary in Macintosh Programmer's Workshop (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer%27s_Work...).
Shells could use that layout to make it easier for users to enter lesser used commands or command options. Some shells would use curses to layout these dialogs, others would choose to use a 'real' GUI. Alternatively, separate tools would be written, and shells would use a COMMANDO shell variable to pick the one the user prefers.
I'd have a real hard time agreeing with that. But I could make an exception for /bin/true.
I agree that help text should be the purpose of the manpages.
A version number (or pointer to version string) could be one of the fields in the file header, to be read by a tool ("version"?) and displayed that way.
This way you still get versioning and documentation, without a massive duplication of functionality across every single binary.
edit: Ah, I see he meant bytes, but mislabeled the graph.
I created an empty file, a la the original true, named truth and placed it at the beginning of my $PATH.
$ time truth
real 0m0.002s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.003s
$ time /usr/bin/true
real 0m0.001s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.000s
$ time /usr/local/sbin/truth
real 0m0.003s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.000s
$ time true # The builtin
real 0m0.000s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.000s
This post is not intended to be a serious performance comparison.
$ time /usr/bin/true
real 0m0.003s
user 0m0.001s
sys 0m0.002s
$ time /usr/bin/truth
real 0m0.001s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.001s
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/psychology-journal-bans...
The default p is p = 0.5, so I have no trouble accepting both your conclusion and your parent's :)
seriously though, this is why we use significance testing in real fields, like computer science...
I hope someone gives you a medal and merit badge and a cookie.
[1] have begun
For instance, 191x growth since 1974 seems steep until you realize that the corresponding storage has grown from, say, 10.5MB (capacity of an RL02 for the PDP11) to ~1TB; a scaling of 100000x over the same period. That's not even really comparing apples-to-apples; the RL02 was not the sort of thing you'd have on your desk.
The original 486 had 8kb of L1 cache. My laptop now has (2x)32k.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB0vBmiTr6o
There's more here: http://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?type[]=4k
The demoscene is basically the exact opposite of mainstream software culture, and although it's focused on multimedia shows, I think some of their techniques and underlying motivation could be applied more generally...
I wonder if /bin/true and /bin/false in their most simplest forms even meet the minimum "requirement for creativity" to be copyrightable, and if the reason why it has bloated significantly is so that it could be.
With the growing complexity, the systems become more and more fragile and difficult to maintain. You can see that, when software just fails on one computer and runs on an other computer with the same operating system, but some little, weird dependency (e.g. with the graphics card) just makes the program misbehave on that particular computer.
Some times I am just worried, that all the computer scientists of the world make the world of computers more and more complex and on one day, the software becomes unmanageable. Even today, as normal computer user, I some times get the impression, that computers take more time (for installing updates and updates of the updates, worrying about threats, getting the best virus scanner ...) as they save us.
I'm currently working a bit with SVG paths. There are some features that aren't really used that much in the wild. For instance quadratic bezier curves, arcs, a shorthand syntax for successive horizontal/vertical lines in a subpath. Those things could be debated but they are okay.
Then we also have things that are really just unneeded. You can also write numbers in xxEyy or xx.yyEzz way. Scientific notation has limited uses, computer graphics is not one of them. You can use a comma in addition to optional whitespace, but only at specific locations and at most one. Also there's exactly one place in the grammar where the whitespace is not marked optional.
"Software tends to grow over time, whether or not there’s a need for it"
Not really a meaningful explanation. Nor is the example.