DefederateLemmyMl

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 8th, 2023

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  • Personally I am of the nonanoist denomination. I will curse all the demons of hell when on a new system I type vipw or systemctl edit some.service and I am unexpectedly faced with the demon called nano. Words cannot describe how much I loathe this pityful excuse for an editor, this usurper of editing powers, this illegitimate occupier of the editor symlink. How dare you insult me, the omnipotent god called root, by presenting me with a training tool for novices?!

    Fortunately, there are ancient spells that can nullify its powers. ‘I command you: be gone Satan’, I will utter under my breath as I carefully type in the magic incantation to cast it back into the fiery chasm from whence it came:

    apt -y purge nano
    
    disclaimer

    This post may contain up to 50% satire


  • The thing is, simple can mean two things, and they are quite often at odds with each other.

    It can mean simple to understand, or simple to use.

    For example, a piece of software that’s just a binary, a config file and a man page describing the config file and the software’s behavior is generally quite easy to understand. Like, you can fit the idea of the program entirely into your mind and “comprehend” it, though it may not be easy to use for a novice.

    By contrast, a piece of software that contains additional layers for easy of use, like a GUI to edit options, may be simple to use, but not necessarily simple to understand. The additional layers add more complexity that does not contribute to core functionality of the program, it can become unclear what gets changed where when you click on buttons, the config file is likely not documented, human readable or editable, or it may even be a completely opaque configuration database (the registry), … So making the software more simple to use, often makes it harder to comprehend.

    I, and I think many other nerds, like software that is simple in the “comprehensible” sense, we want to be able to wrap our head around it completely and we don’t mind putting in a little bit of effort to achieve that comprehension, whereas other people prefer to hit the ground running.