NT_DEV

tl;dr The author [0] describes a simple ticketing system that his very busy coworker, Peter Högfeldt, created in 1986. Basically, it checked in numbered files to their version control (CVS, at the time) that could produce reports with grep. This system's simplicity lead to its longevity, as people could learn it easily and trust that its bugs had been ironed out long ago. This is in contrast to some OS software that tries to be everything to everyone and changes all the time [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Armstrong_(programmer) Joe Armstrong, of Erlang fame, so his blog posts have been discussed in the past.

[1] https://ntdotdev.wordpress.com/2023/01/01/state-of-the-windows-how-many-layers-of-ui-inconsistencies-are-in-windows-11/comment-page-1/

I find this a helpful example. When I've heard the unix philosophy in the past, I didn't feel super convinced. Like, sure tar can do one thing, because it is a library (ignore that it can use gzip). But, where do you draw the line with a program like gnucash (financial tracking software) ? The core of the domain will involve keeping a ledger of transactions and converting them to relevant units. But, typing credit card charges in by hand is tedious [2], the kind of tedious that a computer should be good at. I would much rather that the program connect to my bank [3], to get the transactions directly.

[2] https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/InventoriesAreNontrivial

[3]…

> And because every Linux distro uses a different theme and one of a dozen UI libraries/DEs/etc. the downloaded GUI application will look bad because it won’t fit in.

As opposed to, say, Windows, where there is only one GUI and one theme by one company so everything is perfectly match- wait, no, they have bits and pieces running every GUI they've every invented all the way back to the 90s ( https://www.dvhardware.net/article75347.html , or https://ntdotdev.wordpress.com/2021/02/06/state-of-the-windows-how-many-layers-of-ui-inconsistencies-are-in-windows-10/ though that's old now ) and also lots of applications using QT or Electron or whatever just like on Linux. So clearly that's not the problem; if it's good enough for the most popular desktop OS, it can't be that bad.

>This is completely orthogonal to look-and-feel.

Not completely orthogonal, as several different generations of MS GUI APIs implement different look and feels.

And bundling it with the OS means devs aren't forced to update their apps to the new APIs. It also makes it impossible for MS to automatically switch the look and feel (they could try for trivial things, but they wouldn't be able to properly accomondate old UIs based on pixel positions, nor would they be able to offer many of the new features given older widget designs).

https://segmentfault.com/a/1190000040213084/en

https://ntdotdev.wordpress.com/2021/02/06/state-of-the-windows-how-many-layers-of-ui-inconsistencies-are-in-windows-10/

I've started using Tiny11 on all my setups, then running DeBloat afterwards. This removes every piece of crapware* and none of them seem to try to reinstall on update (so far, fingers crossed).

https://ntdotdev.wordpress.com/2024/01/08/the-complete-tiny10-and-tiny11-list/

https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat

* be warned, this also removes Edge, so you have to grab your own browser installer of choice