this feels like a silly thing to say but even though i’ve been using linux since 2004 I feel like i’m learning recently that the impact of the GNU project’s software (and its design decisions) on me is even bigger than I thought
like even just the fact that (afaik) many of them used Emacs has an impact on me today
(please no “it’s GNU/Linux”)
for example I thought the “vim vs emacs” flamewars were silly (who cares? use what you want!)
but actually I feel like some of the GNU software design decisions are really influenced by emacs (readline, info pages) and that does actually have an effect
(please don’t tell me that readline has a vi mode)
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also this guidance on command line arguments is great, I didn’t realize these things came from the GNU project and I really appreciate them https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Command_002dLine-Interfaces.html#Command_002dLine-Interfaces
(via @zwol)
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Yea; back in "the bad old days" it was common to roll our own command line parameter parsing.
Didn't have the memory for reusable libraries in a 64K byte address machine.
"getopt", with the "--" long option names was a significant improvement. And "--" by itself to *STOP* option processing at that point, forcing all other "words" to be file names.
Julia Evans
Jeff Grigg