

Think (don't cargo cult) - tomphoolery
http://reefpoints.dockyard.com/2013/11/15/think.html

======
kaishiro
If more people followed
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy)),
we could all go home earlier.

~~~
bazillion
While I definitely agree with the unix philosophy in a lot of circumstance
(thanks for linking that by the way -- have never seen that article) for the
smallest common denominator programs that we can make, the typical program
nowadays that people make money off of selling as a standalone product is an
amalgamation of a lot of these modular components. For the most part, any
modular component you want that does one thing and one thing only is already
built in some form. It is the ability to properly mix and maintain the
abstraction of these components' functions that is the programming philosophy
for the new generation.

In a way, I tend to believe that the clash between the older programmers (who
tend to intricately understand the underlying components that they manipulate)
and the newer programmers (who have tend to be able to manipulate a lot of the
built components much quicker) comes from the crossing of this philosophy
threshold.

As far as the original article is concerned, the point is that we shouldn't
just be following one philosophy or another just because some people that
might be more intelligent than us created it (directly against this comment).
You can cherry pick what paradigm works best for you in whatever situation you
find yourself in, and change it if it's not working out as expected. It is
exactly one's own skill that determines whether or not the philosophy one
selects are correct for the situation.

