On Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:16:00 +1100
Jessta <jessta_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
> The thing is that human beings don't really work well with lots of
> things that are very similar, we get confused. Human beings prefer
> things to be similar enough that we can use our previous knowledge to
> figure them out but different enough that they aren't easily confused
> with other things.
>
> Unix's 'everything is a file' isn't really true it's more of a guiding
> principle than a hard and fast rule and it's more like "everything is
> a block or char device" anyway. If you try to shoe-horn everything in
> to being a 'file' you end up with some very confusing and unintutitive
> behaviour like the OOP crowd and their 'everything is an object'.
>
> Lisp has the 'everything is a list' problem and there is lots of
> behaviour that doesn't fit well in to this. Consistancy can make
> things intuitive, but you shouldn't sacrifice intuitiveness for
> consistancy.
>
> - Jessta
>
well said. you should always keep the end goal in mind. and "stay
confirm to how we've been doing it" should not be a goal.
take network interfaces on Linux for example. they have no device file
and it makes perfect sense.
Dieter
Received on Thu Nov 12 2009 - 19:39:24 UTC
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