I’m talking about programs that can’t be improved no matter what. They do exactly what they’re supposed to and will never be changed.

It’ll probably have to be something small, like cd or pwd, but does such a program exist?

  • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
    3·
    50 minutes ago

    Depends on your definition of “perfect” and “improved”. Is it perfect because it does one fundamental thing really well? Is it improved by adding new features?

    I think what you’re meaning is, is there a program that is ubiquitous (or at least works anywhere), will basically remain used forever because it does a fundamental job that will always need to be done, and it does that job in the most straightforward way possible that can’t be made any algorithmically simpler, faster, etc. Probably plenty, honestly. Bitwise operations, arithmetic, fetch/store, etc. Though ubiquity/working anywhere gets rarer the higher you go from hardware. Even your suggestion of cd, for example, has to interface with an OS’s file system, of which there are several common types. What it’s doing is simple in concept, but will always be dependent on other programs for the file system.

  • IanTwenty@piefed.socialEnglish
    6·
    2 hours ago

    There was a moment in time where maybe it was qmail:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qmail

    Ten years after the launch of qmail 1.0, and at a time when more than a million of the Internet’s SMTP servers ran either qmail or netqmail, only four known bugs had been found in the qmail 1.0 releases, and no security issues.

    More on how it was accomplished:

    https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/01/17/some-thoughts-on-security-after-ten-years-of-qmail-1-0/

  • Sephtis@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 hour ago

    Many might disagree, but imo vim is the perfect text editor for a command line interface. It’s just so simpel and does exactly what I need it to do without doing anything unnecessary

      • Sephtis@lemmy.world
        11·
        43 minutes ago

        Never heard of vim9script, what is it. I must admit I don’t use it for a lot of super complicated tasks just regular yaml and file editing. At for that it’s perfect imo

    • who@feddit.orgEnglish
      1·
      23 minutes ago

      Nit: vim is a visual editor. It has a text interface, but it’s not a command line interface.

      An example of a command line text editor would be sed.

      • Sephtis@lemmy.world
        1·
        8 minutes ago

        I know it isn’t a cli but a text editor that you can use in a terminal, if there’s any other difference i got wrong feel free to correct me

      • Sephtis@lemmy.world
        11·
        54 minutes ago

        Might install that then in the future, if I remember it. Sudo apt-get install vim is just so ingrained in muscle memory

  • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
    4·
    3 hours ago

    I don’t think such thing as perfect software exist, only abandoned software. If the environment changes, then the software needs changes too.

  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialEnglish
    8·
    4 hours ago

    Is there a perfect building?

    Probably not, since they exist in an environment — which is constantly changing — and are used by people — whose needs are constantly changing.

    The same is true of software. Yes, programs consist of math which has objective qualities. But in order to execute in the physical world, they have to make certain assumptions which can always be invalidated.

    Consider fast inverse sqrt: maybe perfect, for the time, for specific uses, on specific hardware? Probably not perfect for today.

  • BrightCandle@lemmy.world
    3·
    4 hours ago

    Pretty certain cd and pwd have changed over the years. The kernel hasn’t remained the same so the commands that use it wont and now we have faster methods to do various things like getting file data the commands that depend on it will change. Less quickly than something that is still gaining features but bit rot is a very real effect since every single part of software is in constant flux.