One of the most persistent myths about China is that its system works with great efficiency, enabling concerted action and long-term planning

But such rosy assessments overlook key costs – not least to the rights and protection of citizens.
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At one point, Randers writes in his report: “I think we will see 40 years down the line that it was the Chinese who did, in the end, solve the climate problem for us – through collective action. They will produce the electric cars and the technologies we will need, and they will implement them in China through centralised decisions.”
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But there are two crucial questions we should think seriously about before we reach conclusions about the Chinese experience and extend it to possible lessons for the world. First, where does all of this money come from? And second, why does the government enjoy such powers of enforcement.

What to learn from all this? On the one hand, Unix wins: it's supposed to be quick and easy to assemble small tools to do whatever it is you're trying to do. When time wouldn't do the arithmetic I needed it to, I sent its output to a generic arithmetic-doing utility. When I needed to count to twenty, I had a utility for doing that; if I hadn't there are any number of easy workarounds. The shell provided the I/O redirection and control flow I needed.

On the other hand, gosh, what a weird mishmash of stuff I had to remember or look up. The -l flag for bc. The fact that I needed bc at all because time won't report total CPU time. The $TIME variable that controls its report format. The bizarro 2>&1 syntax for redirecting standard error into a pipe. The sh -c trick to get time to execute a pipeline. The missing documentation of the core functionality of time.

Was it a win overall? What if Unix had less compositionality but I could use it with less memorized trivia? Would that be an improvement?

I don't know. I rather suspect that there's no way to actually reach that hypothetical universe. The bizarre mishmash of weirdness exists because so many different people invented so many tools over such a long period. And they wouldn't have done any of that inventing if the compositionality hadn't been there. I think we don't actually get to make a choice between an incoherent mess of composable paraphernalia and a coherent, well-designed but noncompositional system. Rather, we get a choice between a incoherent but useful mess and an incomplete, limited noncompositional system.

(Notes to self: (1) In connection with Parse::RecDescent, you once wrote about open versus closed systems. This is another point in that discussion. (2) Open systems tend to evolve into messes. But closed systems tend not to evolve at all, and die. (3) Closed systems are centralized and hierarchical; open systems, when they succeed, are decentralized and organic. (4) If you are looking for another example of a successful incoherent mess of composable paraphernalia, consider Git.)

In the fall of 1971, Judith Jones, the Knopf editor who had salvaged many a manuscript from the gallows of the rejection pile, was looking for a Chinese cookbook. She noticed a recent profusion of Chinese restaurants in major metropolitan areas, feeding an American fascination with the regional cuisines of China. Chinese cooking in that era had become synonymous with flamboyance, with foundational techniques that intimidated most American home cooks. Jones wanted someone who could bridge that perceived cultural chasm, to translate the dense aesthetic of Chinese cooking into a familiar culinary grammar for the American reader.

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Hi, I'm Mandy- here every week to share traditional Chinese recipes with you! Occasionally, I'll share some other Asian recipes with you (my favorite ones). Join me on my YouTube journey... just make sure not to watch my videos on an empty stomach =)