In my experience, many if not most command-line tools and programs we use on UNIX are not great examples of simple, small, focused design. Lots of Swiss army knives packed with options. And the interface is limited in frustrating ways.
One example: I started using email with mh, which used command-line tools to slice and dice your mailbox. Each of these tools was relatively easy to use. But who uses this approach anymore to read email?
It's a more interesting design question I think to study when UNIX tools are subject to the same diseconomies of scale as everything else...
One example: I started using email with mh, which used command-line tools to slice and dice your mailbox. Each of these tools was relatively easy to use. But who uses this approach anymore to read email?
It's a more interesting design question I think to study when UNIX tools are subject to the same diseconomies of scale as everything else...