Comment by infogulch

4 years ago

The dense fog lifts, tree branches part, a ray of light shines down on the ruins of a moss-covered pedestal revealing the hidden intentions of the ancients. A plaque states "The operational semantics of the most basic primitives of your operating system are optimized to simplify the implementation of command line shells." You look upon the pedestal, pause in respect, then turn away disappointed but unsurprised. As you walk you shake your head trying to evict the after image of a beam of light illuminating a turd.

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infogulch

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tom_  4 years ago

They called it RISC iX because it was RISC.

They called it Minix because it was mini.

And they called it POSIX because...

infogulch  4 years ago

I wrote this silly little bit on a previous fork() thread and touched it up a little. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30504470

  • cryptonector  4 years ago

    It was a glorious comment then, and it is now.

    BTW, it's unclear whether the turd is... the specific truth revealed, or the revelation itself (since it could be incorrect). It's still a glorious comment.

    • infogulch  4 years ago

      Thank you! The goal was to evoke the same emotional response I felt when this idea struck me (I think when I was reading earlier comments in that thread in fact), so I guess there's as much in the sequence as the specific objects. The semantic design of fork was always incomprehensible to me (not what but why), so the setting and pedestal and plaque represent how strongly it struck me and the depth of its historical explanatory power. The turd is how I feel about it. I don't resent the designer's history or motivations or incentives and I'm happy to know the truth. I'm just sad/depressed that this is the reason why things are the way they are, that the original design intent is so misaligned with the needs of modern systems, how it limits our capabilities today even down to hardware, and how unlikely it is for this to change. I don't suppose a turd would last very long on a pedestal, or that the ancients would put a turd there on purpose. Maybe they put something beautiful there back then, but times have changed and now we're stuck with it and it's kind of shit.

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