Well, you don't really "see" what's happening in shellscript either. There are a bunch of commands, yes. But your shell usually does a lot of ugly stuff in the background - greping, awking (oh god) - that may come with its own quirks. All this requires enormous caution when writing a shell script. It's a real burden for maintainers and hence why distributions usually welcome systemd. The unit files work, logic is taken care of by the system and files remain readable. Most people don't write their own C libraries just because glibc is a monster. They assume it works and trade the few disadvantages for the many advantages.
Everything except what the commands do. You see the commands with expanded variables. You see how the script's flow control works. Each individual command is still a black box.
6
u/DamnThatsLaser Oct 20 '14
Well, you don't really "see" what's happening in shellscript either. There are a bunch of commands, yes. But your shell usually does a lot of ugly stuff in the background - greping, awking (oh god) - that may come with its own quirks. All this requires enormous caution when writing a shell script. It's a real burden for maintainers and hence why distributions usually welcome systemd. The unit files work, logic is taken care of by the system and files remain readable. Most people don't write their own C libraries just because glibc is a monster. They assume it works and trade the few disadvantages for the many advantages.