ⓔ Why the term app smashing must die

I tweeted out this morning that the term app smashing should die, but, in the span of a tweet, it is hard to articulate why.

We’ve done what is currently called “app-smashing” since the dawn of time. Houses weren’t built with only one tool, you “app-smashed” several tools, like a hammer and saw, to create a house. When the Unix operating system was developed in the ’70s, the programmers relied on small, discrete programs that were dedicated to a specific task and tied them together with what are called pipes. One program could output the contents of a text file, which would be piped into another program that could search each line for a specific term, which would then be piped into another program that would manipulate the line. The programmers believed in small programs that were the best at what they did. This concept worked so well it is being used over 40 years later.

And today, you’ll usually use more than one tool to complete a task. Maybe you’re working on a website, and will use Photoshop to manage the pictures, and a text editor for the html. Why would you create, and worse, use a new term for a process that has always happened? We don’t need to always create a new term for everything!

Now get off my lawn!