> In that sense, LLMs are embodying the Unix philosophy. Of course, this analogy has holes so big you can easily ride a horse through. LLMs are neither small nor do they do one thing—you could even argue that some of the things they do, they certainly do not do well.
People love to say the Unix philosophy is "Write programs that do one thing and do it well". But this does not really seem to me to really match Unix practice. And it doesn't match LLMs either, as the article notes.
(So what is this article talking about? I guess it's talking mainly about "Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface".)
My Java, .NET, Go, JavaScript/Typescript code running on serverless deployments, or low code/no code agentic tools, don't care what OS is powering the underlying type 1 hypervisor running their containers.
He's talking about philosophies in the article, one of which is that "text is the universal interface". LLMs are embracing this, as Unix did decades before.
> Many of the command-line tools I use have been around for quite some time now1 but they still work admirably and allow me to do things like this:2
> [...]
> If this reads like gibberish to you, my younger hothead self, full of (neo)vim and vigor, would have hit you with the old “Linux is very user-friendly; it’s just also super picky about its friends.” Yes, younger me was adept at making enemies like a craftsman
No, it reads like you are an entitled fanboi and need to touch gra^W^W talk with a real human beings outside your small citrcle of nerds. Even better - to work a couple of weeks with your own hands and your own back. That helps.
> In that sense, LLMs are embodying the Unix philosophy. Of course, this analogy has holes so big you can easily ride a horse through. LLMs are neither small nor do they do one thing—you could even argue that some of the things they do, they certainly do not do well.
So the title is just clickbait
yep. so exhausting.
OT: Please refrain from commenting and just flag the article. This might seem harsh but it’s a strong signal to the submitter to find better content.
Flagging is for content that breaks the guidelines, not for content you disagree with.
> Presenting at first nothing but an input box to the user, they constituted a deliberate break in habits for many
No, users were used to it because that's how Google works.
People love to say the Unix philosophy is "Write programs that do one thing and do it well". But this does not really seem to me to really match Unix practice. And it doesn't match LLMs either, as the article notes.
(So what is this article talking about? I guess it's talking mainly about "Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface".)
My Java, .NET, Go, JavaScript/Typescript code running on serverless deployments, or low code/no code agentic tools, don't care what OS is powering the underlying type 1 hypervisor running their containers.
He's talking about philosophies in the article, one of which is that "text is the universal interface". LLMs are embracing this, as Unix did decades before.
Not only are LLMs perfectly equipped for command-line interfaces, Linux is also the most performant OS for hosting the models locally.
How so? Compared to say Mac OS? (Just curious)
s/Unix/The CLI/
But yes. That’s true.
> Many of the command-line tools I use have been around for quite some time now1 but they still work admirably and allow me to do things like this:2
> [...]
> If this reads like gibberish to you, my younger hothead self, full of (neo)vim and vigor, would have hit you with the old “Linux is very user-friendly; it’s just also super picky about its friends.” Yes, younger me was adept at making enemies like a craftsman
No, it reads like you are an entitled fanboi and need to touch gra^W^W talk with a real human beings outside your small citrcle of nerds. Even better - to work a couple of weeks with your own hands and your own back. That helps.