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In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)

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412 points conanxin | 10 comments | 27 Jul 24 06:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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mxwsn ◴[27 Jul 24 07:02 UTC] No.41084928[source]▶
This essay by Neal Stephenson was first published in 1999. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_...

The analogy of OS as cars (Windows is a station wagon, Linux is a tank) is brought up in the recent Acquired episode on Microsoft, where Vista was a Dodge Viper but Windows 7 was a Toyota Camry, which is what users actually wanted.

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GrumpyYoungMan ◴[27 Jul 24 11:46 UTC] No.41085934[source]▶
And Neal Stephenson acknowledged it was obsolete in 2004:

"I embraced OS X as soon as it was available and have never looked back. So a lot of 'In the beginning was the command line' is now obsolete. I keep meaning to update it, but if I'm honest with myself, I have to say this is unlikely."

https://slashdot.org/story/04/10/20/1518217/neal-stephenson-...

But people still dredge this quarter century old apocrypha up and use it to pat themselves on the back for being Linux users. "I use a Hole Hawg! I drive a tank! I'm not like those other fellows because I'm a real hacker!"

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llm_trw ◴[27 Jul 24 15:04 UTC] No.41087044[source]▶
Given what OS X has become it's un-obsoleted itself again.

It's kind of ironic that you're using a post from 20 years ago to invalidate an essay from 25 years ago, about an OS that's been substantially dumbed down in the last 10 years.

Bad corporate blood will tell.

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UniverseHacker ◴[27 Jul 24 15:17 UTC] No.41087115{3}[source]▶
In what way has it been “dumbed down?” I use modern MacOS as a Unix software development workstation and it works great- nothing substantial has changed in 20 years other than better package managers. I suppose they did remove X11 but it’s trivial to install yourself.
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isametry ◴[27 Jul 24 15:47 UTC] No.41087307{4}[source]▶
Not GP, but usually when people talk about the "dumbing down" of macOS, they refer to new apps and GUI elements adopted from iOS.

macOS as an operating system has been "completed" for about 7 years. From that point, almost all additions to it have been either focused on interoperation with the iPhone (good), or porting of entire iPhone features directly to Mac (usually very bad).

Another point of view is that macOS is great, but all ideas that make it great come from 20 years ago, and have died at the company since then. If Apple were to build a desktop OS today, there's no way they would make it the best Unix-like system of all time.

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1. layer8 ◴[27 Jul 24 16:49 UTC] No.41087772[source]▶
> Another point of view is that macOS is great, but all ideas that make it great come from 20 years ago, and have died at the company since then.

This also applies to Windows, by the way (except it’s more like 20-30 years ago).

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2. ◴[27 Jul 24 18:04 UTC] No.41088285[source]▶
3. jthoward64 ◴[27 Jul 24 20:45 UTC] No.41089215[source]▶
Whereas Linux never stopped coming up with new ideas, but doesn't have the manpower to implement them
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4. Animats ◴[28 Jul 24 05:47 UTC] No.41091445[source]▶
systemd!

(Currently struggling with the way systemd inserts itself into the DNS query chain and then botches things.)

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5. psd1 ◴[28 Jul 24 07:59 UTC] No.41091861{3}[source]▶
It likes to fall over to the secondary server, doesn't it.
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6. bornfreddy ◴[28 Jul 24 09:46 UTC] No.41092208{4}[source]▶
It likes to botch things.
7. Animats ◴[28 Jul 24 19:11 UTC] No.41095265{4}[source]▶
There are so many known systemd-resolved bugs [1][2] that I can't tell which one was breaking both of my simple Ubuntu desktop machines. Systemd-resolved sets itself up as the sole DNS resolver and then randomly reports it can't reach any DNS servers.

[1] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3A...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/18kh1r5/im_shocked_t...

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8. TylerE ◴[28 Jul 24 20:11 UTC] No.41095623[source]▶
Which is why I gave up on it. Was tired of something in my workflow breaking every 6 weeks because “ooh shiny”
9. ahartmetz ◴[29 Jul 24 21:16 UTC] No.41103890{3}[source]▶
The how-hard-can-it-be-and-who-cares-anyway approach to replacing basic system components. Love it.
10. psd1 ◴[02 Aug 24 09:53 UTC] No.41137439{5}[source]▶
Yes and... the tools are now highly distro-specific. I don't want to allocate my study time to resolvectl, I want to allocate it to programming, but my home server requires me to be a beginner again in something that was easy a decade ago. And I am not getting anything of value for that trade.