> you're trying to infer something not even by lack of existence, but from lack of public popularity. Logic does not work this way.
The world absolutely does work that way - if there's no popular public example of a large system built with an old, well-known, widely-advocated design philosophy in a field with millions of engineered artifacts, that's extremely strong evidence that that design philosophy doesn't work for large systems.
This is not physics, where "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", nor is it logic, where you can't affirm the consequent. This is architecture, where you have a bunch of design philosophies that you can try out, and if there's a well-known philosophy that's been around for a period of time, with a large and vocal following, and yet there isn't a single public artifact of its success (for large systems), that's a very strong signal that it simply does not work (for large systems).
> ignoring the fact that I do know of such examples
...which you've presented no evidence for, so I straight-up don't believe you (and, any other HN readers reading this post, I would encourage you to think very hard about whether they're worth believing without providing any evidence whatsoever).
> this is irrelevant as arguing that it is not possible requires justifying why it is not possible
When did I ever argue that it was not possible? This is a straw-man argument.
> not pointing to your purported absence of evidence that it is possible
Weasel-words. I provided strong evidence of absence, not "purported".
> Your conclusion does not follow from your argument.
You know the pyramid of arguments? You're around the middle, at "stating the opposing case without providing evidence".
> Clearly the fact that tools generally accepted as standard unix tools includes multiple Turing-complete tools illustrates that the intent is not this kind of ultimate reductionist thinking.
It's obviously not that kind of ultimate reductionist thinking - that's not what I'm arguing. I'm arguing that the Unix philosophy is not useful for building large systems, given whatever the most commonly-held definition of "the Unix philosophy" is, regardless of whether I defined it right or not. In a previous comment, you said:
> Part of the point is to have composable, reusable tools, not to reject using additional code when building something else, but to avoid having to write the common parts over and over.
...and yet, you still can't name a large, popular system that is made with components that fit those criteria, your own criteria, even as you nitpick mine!
> Your conclusion does not follow from your argument.
Stating the opposite case without providing evidence.
> Again, your conclusions do not follow from your arguments.
And here.
> This would be relevant if you'd supported your arguments in a logically sound way so that there was something meaningful to refute.
Here I'm going to point out that you claimed that my arguments were invalid without actually providing any reasoning or explanation for why you thought so, and then point out that you incorrectly tried to apply logic to a domain where it doesn't apply (architecture/design).
To future readers: notice the consistent pattern of claims without evidence, strawmanning of my points, and contradiction without explanation, and ask yourself if you want to believe this random person on the internet who claims, without any evidence whatsoever, that they have seen some mythical systems out there created using the Unix philosophy, while not a single public example exists.