Note on Unix Philosophy

Yeah, nice analogy. Pity they ruined it with the whole Russian pen analogy. The Russians used pencils, sure, but it's never mentioned that a. they used the Fisher Space Pen also, and b. there were fire dangers and problems with zero gravity and lead flying around a spacecraft.

I largely agree with KISS, but like the space pencil analogy, it doesn't always match to reality.

The NASA pen story, is it real or just a myth? In an attempt to answer myself, I found this:

http://history.nasa.gov/spacepen.html

I was just watching a show about the design of the lunar descent module. Grumman put the spaceship on a giant gimbal and rotated it through 360 degrees in all directions to make sure there was nothing loose to become floating debris. An astronaut could swallow or breath in anything loose like a metal shaving. Perhaps NASA wanted a pen because the chances of a loose glob of ink were significantly less than a broken pencil tip floating into someone's eye.

I agree with the article that sometimes simple is best but only when simple isn't too simple for the job.

I was looking for notes and commentary, not simply a restating of UNIX principles.