Re: Future shell work - comments reqyuested

[Izaac <izaac%setec.org@localhost>]

On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 09:52:14AM -0400, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> Removing features as a way to enforce some kind of religious notion of
> programmer discipline (which seems to be what the rest of your message
> suggests) is dumb.  I would like to see our shell remain about the size

I elided a response to this in my prior reply, but think it more
appropriate to address directly.

This is not about programmer discipline, it is about portability.  The
programmer discipline to which you -- not I -- refer is not a religious
notion.  It is, instead, a means by which one is able to get the most
utility out of their software artifact.  This efficiency is of practical
necessity for those programmers who work in heterogeneous environments.
So much so that whole compatibility layers are developed in order to
support it, e.g. the extreme example of Interix/SFU and cygwin.

A programmer looking to efficiently support a heterogeneous environment
must necessarily use only those features found in all places.  He must
therefore eschew all things unique to a particular environment.  When
one takes a step back and looks at such an environment, one can see that
those unique aspects are, therefore, superfluous.  And that which is
superfluous is able -- and ought -- to be omitted.

So, we find ourselves with an environment that already lacks these
superfluous features; they would have to be added.  If a feature ought
to be avoided for portability reasons, why should it even exist?  You're
advocating for their addition.  /You/ justify to /me/ why we should take
on the risks and costs of complexity for these features.

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