The Programmer's Prison: Escaping the Trap of Bloated Software Tools
This article explores the dilemma of bloated software tools: to avoid user churn, tools constantly expand their functionality, ultimately becoming cumbersome. The author proposes several solutions: limiting tool growth (impractical), decreasing switching costs (through backward compatibility and standardization), leveraging FFI (Foreign Function Interface) and IPC (Inter-Process Communication). Unix shells, using IPC, allow tool composition, but data flow is unidirectional and lacks structure. PowerShell and NuShell introduce structured data, but interoperability and version stability remain issues. RPC (Remote Procedure Call) offers a structured interface but requires extensive code modification. The author concludes that programs themselves are prisons, restricting data flow and interoperability, and teases a follow-up post exploring escape strategies.