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this hackernews article is partially about fighting over whether these unix commands are better or worse than a program called 'replace' that someone wrote:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5107491
People go back and forth; the existing commands are already a basis, so everyone should learn them; vs. this common operation is convoluted with those commands, so it is better. It seems to me that the obvious answer is that both are useful, maybe at different times or maybe to different users, just like sed is still around now that we have perl.
But if everytime something like this comes up we tack on a new command, we get too many commands.
So, i think we need a periodic refactoring of the basis set of unix tools. Perhaps even some kind of voting system to add popular commands or to bless one proposed refactoring out of the others.
Of course, the real question is, how to implement that socially.
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