Why we should study history...

Oh, it happened so many times! I stumbled upon it already while reading John Day's book titled Patterns in network architecture: A return to fundamentals. In short, at one point something is controversial and in next, it's regarded as a some kind of a rule that people passionately protect! One good example is 7-layer ISO/OSI Reference Model. When it was created it was problematic how many layers there should be, now, it is taken as something set in stone that there are 7-layers, while in reality it is dubious if this is a correct number. I'm certain that there are a large number of similar examples in every area you can think of. What this implies is that we have to always question the correctness of our current knowledge knowing that something might happen by chance, or politics of a certain time, and that ultimately hampers us from making further progress, maybe even clean start.

And today, I found this post. written by Rob Landley. It's ubeliviable! I'm using Unix/Linux for over 20 years now, always knowing there is a split between /bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin and /usr/bin and knowing why it is done so. But I realise now that, till today, I didn't actually know and, what's more, this is again an example of something that by accident becomes a law. What's more interesting is that not once I stumbled upon some heated discussion about file system layout (an example) in which there were proponents of this split with a simple argument that it is a Unix way of things! Boy, how wrong they are! :)

I'm copying this post here for a refence: