[mythtv-users] Multiple shows to DVD in one shot?

[Ross Campbell]

> Forgive me for asking so many questions and not using the right terms.
> I'm just curious why there isn't one program that reads the file(s) in
> and writes them out to a DVD structure for burning.

Because that's _not_ the UNIX philosophy...

Excerpt from: http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch01s06.html

-Ross

The Unix philosophy (like successful folk traditions in other
engineering disciplines) is bottom-up, not top-down. It is pragmatic
and grounded in experience. It is not to be found in official methods
and standards, but rather in the implicit half-reflexive knowledge,
the expertise that the Unix culture transmits. It encourages a sense
of proportion and skepticism — and shows both by having a sense of
(often subversive) humor.

Doug McIlroy, the inventor of Unix pipes and one of the founders of
the Unix tradition, had this to say at the time [McIlroy78]:

    (i) Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build
afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new features.

    (ii) Expect the output of every program to become the input to
another, as yet unknown, program. Don't clutter output with extraneous
information. Avoid stringently columnar or binary input formats. Don't
insist on interactive input.

    (iii) Design and build software, even operating systems, to be
tried early, ideally within weeks. Don't hesitate to throw away the
clumsy parts and rebuild them.

    (iv) Use tools in preference to unskilled help to lighten a
programming task, even if you have to detour to build the tools and
expect to throw some of them out after you've finished using them.

He later summarized it this way (quoted in A Quarter Century of Unix [Salus]):

    This is the Unix philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and
do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle
text streams, because that is a universal interface.

Rob Pike, who became one of the great masters of C, offers a slightly
different angle in Notes on C Programming [Pike]:

    Rule 1. You can't tell where a program is going to spend its time.
Bottlenecks occur in surprising places, so don't try to second guess
and put in a speed hack until you've proven that's where the
bottleneck is.

    Rule 2. Measure. Don't tune for speed until you've measured, and
even then don't unless one part of the code overwhelms the rest.

    Rule 3. Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is
usually small. Fancy algorithms have big constants. Until you know
that n is frequently going to be big, don't get fancy. (Even if n does
get big, use Rule 2 first.)

    Rule 4. Fancy algorithms are buggier than simple ones, and they're
much harder to implement. Use simple algorithms as well as simple data
structures.

    Rule 5. Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures
and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be
self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to
programming.[9]

    Rule 6. There is no Rule 6.

Ken Thompson, the man who designed and implemented the first Unix,
reinforced Pike's rule 4 with a gnomic maxim worthy of a Zen
patriarch:

    When in doubt, use brute force.

More of the Unix philosophy was implied not by what these elders said
but by what they did and the example Unix itself set. Looking at the
whole, we can abstract the following ideas:

   1. Rule of Modularity: Write simple parts connected by clean interfaces.
   2. Rule of Clarity: Clarity is better than cleverness.
   3. Rule of Composition: Design programs to be connected to other programs.
   4. Rule of Separation: Separate policy from mechanism; separate
interfaces from engines.
   5. Rule of Simplicity: Design for simplicity; add complexity only
where you must.
   6. Rule of Parsimony: Write a big program only when it is clear by
demonstration that nothing else will do.
   7. Rule of Transparency: Design for visibility to make inspection
and debugging easier.
   8. Rule of Robustness: Robustness is the child of transparency and
simplicity.
   9. Rule of Representation: Fold knowledge into data so program
logic can be stupid and robust.
  10. Rule of Least Surprise: In interface design, always do the least
surprising thing.
  11. Rule of Silence: When a program has nothing surprising to say,
it should say nothing.
  12. Rule of Repair: When you must fail, fail noisily and as soon as possible.
  13. Rule of Economy: Programmer time is expensive; conserve it in
preference to machine time.
  14. Rule of Generation: Avoid hand-hacking; write programs to write
programs when you can.
  15. Rule of Optimization: Prototype before polishing. Get it working
before you optimize it.
  16. Rule of Diversity: Distrust all claims for "one true way".
  17. Rule of Extensibility: Design for the future, because it will be
here sooner than you think..