
Rob Pike: /bin/true used to be an empty file - sohkamyung
https://twitter.com/rob_pike/status/966896123548872705
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eesmith
Discussed in more depth in "Code Inflation" in IEEE Software at
[https://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/issue...](https://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/issues/2015/04/mso2015020010.pdf)
. Links to that article are posted to HN about every 6-9 months.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=code%20inflation&sort=byPopula...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=code%20inflation&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

See also
[http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/humor/ATT_Copyright_true.html](http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/humor/ATT_Copyright_true.html)
, with about 80 HN comments
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%2Fbin%2Ftrue%20command&sort=b...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%2Fbin%2Ftrue%20command&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)
.

------
Isamu
> This is why we can't have good software. This program could literally have
> been an empty file, a nothing at all, a name capturing the essence
> perfectly. > But the inexorable forces of improvement dictate we can't
> accept that, so here we are:

Keeping things as simple as possible is a bit of a losing battle.

