As does every program that reads from a config file.
One does not have to use files to set the variables of course. This just works well for long-running-programs, e.g. daemons.
"... unless you're putting files in a tmpfs)"
Always files are in mfs.
As for strongly typed data and passing data instead of text, I prefer k to Powershell. There is also a uniformity to APL built-in functions. The number of arguments is limited. PS is quite slow on startup and too verbose.
As for "free-form" sometimes rearranging arguments (as glibc is capable of) can cause more complexity than is warranted.
Consider a program like signify. Then consider gpg.
The best command line program "interfaces" IMO are the ones the fewest options and least possible variability in arguments. Best interface is no interface, etc.
One of the obvious benefits for UNIX programs of this nature is portability.
It is well-known that Apple uses Omniture (acquired by Adobe, aka SiteCatalyst, aka 2o7.net, etc.).
As in 192.168.0.2o7.net. Remember, "SWF" stands for Small Web File. Yes, they actually tried to get users to swallow this when Shockwave Flash started to be used in devious ways, such as to track users.
Omniture's business is third party tracking cookies similar to Google Analytics or KISSmetrics. Not sure and don't care whether Flash is used so much anymore. If too young to rememeber search and ye shall find information about "permanent, Flash cookies" that could not be removed.
Apple is not saying "We will not engage with companies selling third party tracking cookie services." Clearly they are not opposed to third party tracking cookies in principle.
Instead they are announcing some change to their browser. Wow, exciting. It is not clear what exactly this announcement accomplishes for users. Probably nothing. If you are trying to avoid ads and tracking, popular browsers (without extensions, etc.) are not your friends.
There is no option to turn off phoning home to Apple in Apple's pre-installed operating systems. Every user of iOS is constantly pinging Apple servers all day every day.
Connect an iOS device to the internet and watch the network. The user is given no control over this. All users are assumed to need Apple's help setting the system time.
The networking functionality of NeXT/Apple's operating systems is based on open source BSD operating system code.
But BSD does not phone home to some organization when you install it. Why not? Surely Apple's approach is the best one for all users, right?
It is amusing to watch these companies proclaim they will block others from tracking and serving ads while continuing to siphon user data themselves, often in ways that are all but transparent to users. Apple can block everyone else, then I can block Apple. OK by me.
Someone in this thread made some comment about Microsoft Edge not tracking users. Do people seriously believe nonsense like that? MS was dumping debug output via DrWatson to the network long before collecting user data for profit was even a strategy.
Connect a Windows computer to the internet and watch the network. All on by default. Unlike Apple, they have no prepared explanation/justification why they need to do this.
And even if they did, who cares? Users prefer not to be tracked. Companies are admitting they know this.
Users could opt-in to tracking if they believed they were getting some benefit.
But that is not how this game works. There is no "opt-in". It is on by default. There was no intention to make tracking a "choice".
Probably because companies know what the choice of users would be and it would not be favorable to the company.
But that is not something we are allowed to discuss.
Every time someone posts a link to some new or popular database claiming some superior performance, I think of this "fragment". One individual took this idea and made a database system that beats them all. You never see it included in the benchmark comparisons for these other databases posted about on HN. I wonder why?
Oft forgotten: All source code looks "cryptic" to someone who has no previous exposure to programming.
As a newcomer to programming I would rather be saddled with trying to understand this "fragment" than trying to understand the beginnings of the source code for some other language like Python. Less lines of code to figure out and, if I were successful in understanding it, the payoff is much greater... in more ways than one.
Isn't there an often repeated statistic about the avg number of LOC a C programmer writes in a day?
Wouldn't it be nice if just one or a few lines was actually a complete program?
What is needed but AFAIK is never discussed is an objective index of what is on the www.
(Not a cache of the entire www, and not a full-text search engine. Rather, an index, similar to what is in the Yellow Pages (subject, alphabetical), but going a little further. For example, each site might submit a list of say 5 selected "permanent" URLs where a user could retrieve site information.)
This is not an insurmountable task. And it need not be conducted by a private company. A significant amount of the work is already done with respect to sites that register domain names, via zone files. But this is only start and is not comprehensive.
Back in the day, early search engines required operators to submit www sites to the search engine. That active involvement of www site operators seems to have been lost.
There could well be a publicly-run directory service for the www. Operators could submit their site to a public agency instead of a private company. Or at least make it easy for a very simple crawler to retrieve a sitemap.xml or some file with a standard format for disclosing site information.
Private companies have difficulty policing overzealous marketing and fraud in such situations. Today we have one company using "secret algorithms" that supposedly address the situation. But if a site is submitting information to a governmental agency instead of a private company maybe it becomes a little less easy for marketers to bend the truth. There is more opportunity and incentive to enforce the consumer protection laws. Better for consumers.
Users could still access Google to determine popularity of a given www site (or "relevance" if you believe that popularity has some bearing on relevance).
Keeping in mind that Google is a private company that encourages a bidding war between advertisers for a spot to the right of the top popularity ranking for a given search query. The behind the scenes of the auction process is opaque. Google has no incentive to be wholly objective.
Give users more choice how to look up www sites. (Note this is a little different than full text search. It is far less complex.)
Site discovery: This is a fundamental problem that is occasionally discussed. Site discovery. All those sites users never learn about because of search engine schemes like "PageRank". We see the same phenomenon in an "App Store". Top 10 are promoted excessively. All the rest are never discovered by the vast majority of users. Perhaps the only reason someone can make large sums through selling an app is because if they can get into the top 10, then all other apps are effectively hidden from most users. This dynamic creates a certain hype and draws in more contributors all trying to get into the top 10. Each paying fees to the company behind the "App Store". Can we apply a similar analysis to Google search and the sale of AdWords? What might fuel demand for ads? The lure of a #1 rank or an ad to the right of it?
Getting back to the issue: Let user/developers work with a free, objective index not produced or manipulated by a private company. I can think of many ways to build efficient search i.e., www site discovery, using such an index. I believe others would have even better ideas.
We already have a privately-held cache of the entire www.
What we still need is a publicly-accesible index into that cache so that users can discover www sites by means other that popularity.
Idea for startup: Compete with Facebook on one item: meetings for groups and organizations. Allow users to join groups without having to join Facebook.
As does every program that reads from a config file.
One does not have to use files to set the variables of course. This just works well for long-running-programs, e.g. daemons.
"... unless you're putting files in a tmpfs)"
Always files are in mfs.
As for strongly typed data and passing data instead of text, I prefer k to Powershell. There is also a uniformity to APL built-in functions. The number of arguments is limited. PS is quite slow on startup and too verbose.
As for "free-form" sometimes rearranging arguments (as glibc is capable of) can cause more complexity than is warranted.
Consider a program like signify. Then consider gpg.
The best command line program "interfaces" IMO are the ones the fewest options and least possible variability in arguments. Best interface is no interface, etc.
One of the obvious benefits for UNIX programs of this nature is portability.