Ghosts of Unix past, part 4: High-maintenance designs

I'm not sure why a non-programmer of any stripe would care about Autotools, but I expect that many programmers care about fundamental truths of human nature. After all, it's easy and commonplace to: be up to one's eyeballs in debt, surrender liberty for security, use Windows, etc. It's often a long time before one figures out that the easy road was the road to destruction.

Neil makes a good case that this fundamental truth is applicable to the domain of Operating System design. A pat on the back to Neil. And yes I did want to make clear to Our Editor, in light of your post, that indeed someone from the readership liked and appreciated the reference.