"There is a line of dharma teaching, exemplified by the
Patriarch McIlroy's mantra ‘Do one thing well’, which
emphasizes that software partakes of the Unix way when it
has simple and consistent behavior, with properties that can
be readily modeled by the mind of the user and used by other
programs."
"But there is another line of dharma teaching,
exemplified by the Patriarch Thompson's great mantra ‘When
in doubt, use brute force’, and various sutras on the value
of getting 90% of cases right now, rather than 100% later,
which emphasizes robustness and simplicity of
implementation."
"Now tell me: which programs have the Unix nature?"
After a silence, Nubi observed:
"Master, these teachings may conflict."
"A simple implementation is likely to lack logic for edge
cases, such as resource exhaustion, or failure to close a
race window, or a timeout during an uncompleted
transaction."
"When such edge cases occur, the behavior of the software
will become irregular and difficult. Surely this is not the
Way of Unix?"
Master Foo nodded in agreement.
"On the other hand, it is well known that fancy
algorithms are brittle. Further, each attempt to cover an
edge case tends to interact with both the program's central
algorithms and the code covering other edge cases."
"Thus, attempts to cover all edge cases in advance,
guaranteeing ‘simplicity of description’, may in fact
produce code that is overcomplicated and brittle or which,
plagued by bugs, never ships at all. Surely this is not the
Way of Unix?"
Master Foo nodded in agreement.
"What, then, is the proper dharma path?" asked Nubi.
The master spoke:
"When the eagle flies, does it forget that its feet have
touched the ground? When the tiger lands upon its prey, does
it forget its moment in the air? Three pounds of VAX!"
