Ivan Enderlin 🦀The case for Nushell, https://www.jntrnr.com/case-for-nushell/.
Relevant article about shells, and how Nushell pushes the boundaries further. I highly recommend reading it.
Charlie Stross@hywan @Keltounet Question: "can the state of shells be improved enough to overcome the inertia of sticking to what you know?"
This is the wrong question. It presupposes zero cost of transition, while the cognitive workload of learning a new shell rises exponentially with age (hint: I'm nearly 60, shells are harder to adapt to than a new GUI). Stability and continuity are essential prerequisites to productivity!
Ollivier Robert 🇺🇦😷🌈@Keltounet @hywan Computing is not my job. It hasn't been my job for over two decades. Time spent learning a new shell or thinking about computers is time *wasted* from the non-compsci point of view.
Thing is, the question about the utility of switching to a new shell has embedded ideological assumptions that implicitly privilege computing over applications. To 99% of the world applications of computing are the priority; the machines and software are just an annoying drag on getting stuff done.
@Keltounet @hywan There's a deeper point: the past 70 years of computing have focussed on a spurious vision of progress that forgets to consider the utility of a stable platform. Operating systems in particular are driven by commercial goals (sell more software! Get more Linux desktops out there!) that are actively inimical to the needs of their users. Forcing users to learn a new way of working every year—even if they don't need to—is crazy. And it renders computers inaccessible to the elderly.
@Keltounet @hywan I watched my mother progressively (and completely) lose the ability to use her iMac during her final decade because Apple kept f*cking around with the Mac OS X user interface, the way Mail worked, the colour of the window maximize/minimize buttons, and stuff that probably looked trivial to a 30-something UI designer but was deeply disruptive to an 80 something with impaired memory. And by losing that access, she lost touch with friends (via email).
tshepang@cstross
I would agree many UI changes in all manner of tools seem to be change for its own sake (where improvements are not clear, or worse, where the UX feels worse), as if the decision makers need to feel productive
@Keltounet @hywan
I would agree many UI changes in all manner of tools seem to be change for its own sake (where improvements are not clear, or worse, where the UX feels worse), as if the decision makers need to feel productive
@Keltounet @hywan
@tshepang @Keltounet @hywan UI changes in corporate products seem to happen purely to justify the product manager's request for a pay rise at their annual review! And at Google, old products get killed ruthlessly to make way for new products because that's the only way a manager can earn promotion.
This shit is actively hostile to the users' interests, but it's ubiquitous.
I mean, Canonical think 5 years is "long term stable" for Ubuntu, which is bullshit: should be AT LEAST a decade.
Thomas Depierre@cstross @tshepang @Keltounet @hywan I mean, on the other hand, 10 years LTS is... really expensive if not impossible. Computers are not some magical thing frozen in time. Maintenance costs rise fast, and not linearly with time, especially with context change.
I totally agree with your point on the UX change ofc, but for example, in terms of shell, as he mentioned in the article... Nushell is not really meant to replace your use of shell. It is built to replace glue scripts. And yes. needed.
@Di4na @tshepang @Keltounet @hywan
"Maintenance costs rise fast"
... which is why IBM mainframes still happily run Series 360 assembly programs from the early 1960s, the hardware is all hot-swappable and fault tolerant, and the main backward compatability issue is finding folks who know what the bottom of the application stack is even supposed to do (the original designers all died of old age).
The inevitability of perpetual churn is a lie. It can be avoided.
@cstross @tshepang @Keltounet @hywan I mean yes, it costs so much to run stuff still on these machines that the estimated cost reduction from moving away from them and paying for the churn is regularly considered order of magnitude cheaper than to keep paying that cost. Ofc the cost of switching is high because it has accumulated over time.
I have seen the accountant doing the maths, I have been in these rooms. It can be avoided, totally. But the costs is rarely one anyone is ready to pay.
ck@Di4na @cstross @tshepang @Keltounet @hywan the implicit choice here is that the costs went up _because_ everything else rode the churn ladder - parts that we invented 50 years ago to satisfy needs in say, electronics, have had their prices bottom out entirely because they are simple commodity parts - what's implicit about computers that prevents us from thinking in this way? If you are making an accounting package with legal changes, sure, but word docs?
@cursedsql @cstross @tshepang @Keltounet @hywan multiple things.
But mostly, because these parts are not the cost. The costs are the design of the board to fit them to our needs. That cost has dropped a bit but not that much. And if you go find an electronic board from 50years ago, you will quickly find out that most of the part are not produced anymore. That it is the wrong voltage for the modern part that replaced them. That the connectors do not fit. Etc.
The parts still exist. Sometimes.
@cursedsql @cstross @tshepang @Keltounet @hywan but combining them together in a way that fit your current needs and the rest of the world they interact with? Not so much.
An example. Most of that IBM 360 emulated stuff mentioned above? Only handle really specific text encoding. Better hope you do not need an apostrophe or an accent in your last name.
@cursedsql @cstross @tshepang @Keltounet @hywan also better hope you don't plan to still use them by 2039. Or that someone was paid to handle the millenium bug.
Even if the parts stay still, the world does not.
@Di4na @cstross @tshepang @Keltounet @hywan and in 2039 the system 360 would have an operating lifecycle of 75 years, an absolutely heroic effort compared to what we do today; through hole parts are still working fine today, and many of the processors that weren't hyper proprietary from the 70s are still around and work fine (6502, etc) - anyway I respect your opinion for say "the modern business" but conflating those with the populaces needs has an inherent impedance mismatch
@cursedsql @cstross @tshepang @Keltounet @hywan you realise i spent multiple years of my life trying to rebuild electronic cards to keep high speed trains from 50 years ago running?
Also the ibm 360 was less than 1% of the systems at that time. It surviving is an exception showing how hard it is. And costly. And how only a few can do it?