When writing software, it’s comparatively easy to come up with grand new ideas and turn them into lines of code and files filled with modules.
What’s much harder is (1) to expand ones code without coupling everything together (2) present it in a persuasive way that naturally builds a user base.
SystemD feels like the new grad hire who decided the first thing the would do after joining — the opening power play — is to convince the PHB we should rewrite everything in Haskell.
At this point the gentler folk start quietly honing their CVs and sneaking their personal belongings off their desks, one night at a time, in the hope no one notices they are all about to quit.
It felt like Unix systems administration was a haven from this sort of politics — I don’t remember tmux, git, or python trying to push behavior changes on upstream components of the OS[1]. I’m sure it’s why Unix attracted a certain type of personality for so many years and I’m sad to see that changing.
[1] If you are thinking “but those are command line utilities, whereas the init process is a much more specialized case” then I’d encourage you to revisit the Unix principles of every component being a small and simple program! Even init, cron, and login! It’s not some grand ideal to be zealously adhered to: it’s the principles of small components that mean the same OS can run on a quad core Xeon as runs on a $45 network switch.
What’s much harder is (1) to expand ones code without coupling everything together (2) present it in a persuasive way that naturally builds a user base.
SystemD feels like the new grad hire who decided the first thing the would do after joining — the opening power play — is to convince the PHB we should rewrite everything in Haskell.
At this point the gentler folk start quietly honing their CVs and sneaking their personal belongings off their desks, one night at a time, in the hope no one notices they are all about to quit.
It felt like Unix systems administration was a haven from this sort of politics — I don’t remember tmux, git, or python trying to push behavior changes on upstream components of the OS[1]. I’m sure it’s why Unix attracted a certain type of personality for so many years and I’m sad to see that changing.
[1] If you are thinking “but those are command line utilities, whereas the init process is a much more specialized case” then I’d encourage you to revisit the Unix principles of every component being a small and simple program! Even init, cron, and login! It’s not some grand ideal to be zealously adhered to: it’s the principles of small components that mean the same OS can run on a quad core Xeon as runs on a $45 network switch.