> The problem, then, is we never converged to foundational level software. That is, if we agreed that bash was a foundation of the system, there would just be the one. And you wouldn't get an odd web of versions of it linked everywhere. All code would just use bash.
I can't imagine how this would be possible, in practice. Software has fractal complexity, there are always things that need to be tweaked, unexpected interactions that need to be decided one way or the other (and changed back).
I remember when Android decided to ship sqlite as part of the base OS, and everyone celebrated this robust, stable inclusion. And yet, sqlite continued to evolve, such that many Android apps nowadays just bundle their own version rather than use the OS's outdated version.
Perhaps we're still in the early days of computing, and only just now starting to see a flattening of the S-curve of change (more likely, I've gotten older and "everything old is new again"), and now some kinds of "foundational" software can stabilize.
But I note that there hasn't been a modern replacement of POSIX, and what POSIX defines is considered hopelessly outdated and limited.
This can really only work if we accept that some things will not change. Only software I know that did this is TeX.
And it was deliberate there. He acknowledged that done things could be improved. Or just done differently. But, he made the choice that it is a foundation for a lot of other code, so bug fixes only.
Edit: I should say explicitly that I agree with you. And I am interested in how this can be solved otherwise.
I can't imagine how this would be possible, in practice. Software has fractal complexity, there are always things that need to be tweaked, unexpected interactions that need to be decided one way or the other (and changed back).
I remember when Android decided to ship sqlite as part of the base OS, and everyone celebrated this robust, stable inclusion. And yet, sqlite continued to evolve, such that many Android apps nowadays just bundle their own version rather than use the OS's outdated version.
Perhaps we're still in the early days of computing, and only just now starting to see a flattening of the S-curve of change (more likely, I've gotten older and "everything old is new again"), and now some kinds of "foundational" software can stabilize.
But I note that there hasn't been a modern replacement of POSIX, and what POSIX defines is considered hopelessly outdated and limited.