this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
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I'm talking about programs that can't be improved no matter what. They do exactly what they're supposed to and will never be changed.

It'll probably have to be something small, like cd or pwd, but does such a program exist?

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[–] myrrh@ttrpg.network 1 points 3 days ago
[–] Gork@sopuli.xyz 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] fruitcantfly@programming.dev 2 points 4 days ago

While WinRAR is pretty great, it has also had several severe security vulnerabilities over the years, including one last year:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinRAR#Security

Which isn’t quite what you’d expect from “perfect” software

[–] whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 5 days ago

Pretty subjective but if you're looking for do one thing and do it well I'd go with some of the GNU core utils like you mentioned, vlc & ffmpeg for AV media, and sl for being a silly way to handle ls typos

Depends on your definition of "perfect" and "improved". Is it perfect because it does one fundamental thing really well? Is it improved by adding new features?

I think what you're meaning is, is there a program that is ubiquitous (or at least works anywhere), will basically remain used forever because it does a fundamental job that will always need to be done, and it does that job in the most straightforward way possible that can't be made any algorithmically simpler, faster, etc. Probably plenty, honestly. Bitwise operations, arithmetic, fetch/store, etc. Though ubiquity/working anywhere gets rarer the higher you go from hardware. Even your suggestion of cd, for example, has to interface with an OS's file system, of which there are several common types. What it's doing is simple in concept, but will always be dependent on other programs for the file system.

[–] KindaABigDyl@programming.dev 4 points 5 days ago

Nope.

I've thought about this before, and it gave me an interesting thought process: AI can't ever be good at doing a large project.

It has a hard limit. Not only is it not as good as us, the best it can ever do is as good as us, and we're not even good at it. That's all it can be trained on! Our garbage code lol

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] fruitcantfly@programming.dev 1 points 4 days ago

Logic gates are hardware, not software

[–] padreati@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 days ago

Some time ago I used haproxy, a software load balancer. I remember that I found an issue which was that it could start with an empty configuration or something similar. When I reached the owner repo it was stated that there were found nu bugs for years of heavy use.

Anything I've ever written....

..JK I suck ass

[–] BrightCandle@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

Pretty certain cd and pwd have changed over the years. The kernel hasn't remained the same so the commands that use it wont and now we have faster methods to do various things like getting file data the commands that depend on it will change. Less quickly than something that is still gaining features but bit rot is a very real effect since every single part of software is in constant flux.

[–] kalpol@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)
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[–] ThetaDecay@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

Pkzip version 2.04g

[–] MITM0@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (2 children)
[–] Kissaki@programming.dev 1 points 4 days ago

The original one? Because there's numerous extensions to it. I wouldn't be confident it won't evolve further.

[–] VitoRobles@lemmy.today 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Didn't IRC have major insecurity issues?

I can't remember why IRC died.

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[–] ieGod@lemmy.zip 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)
[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago

Ehhh, for curl there is a few features they're working on (like better websocket support), and I'm sure there's lots of optimizations that could be made, given how complex a project it is..

[–] beeng@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 5 days ago

Some Quines maybe?

[–] Sephtis@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago (5 children)

Many might disagree, but imo vim is the perfect text editor for a command line interface. It's just so simpel and does exactly what I need it to do without doing anything unnecessary

[–] karlhungus@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

neovim is a drop in replacement for vim that fixes the issues that bother me with vim

[–] Sephtis@lemmy.world 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Might install that then in the future, if I remember it. Sudo apt-get install vim is just so ingrained in muscle memory

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[–] who@feddit.org 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Nit: vim is a visual editor. It has a text interface, but it's not a command line interface.

An example of a command line text editor would be sed.

[–] Sephtis@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

I know it isn't a cli but a text editor that you can use in a terminal, if there's any other difference i got wrong feel free to correct me

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[–] entwine@programming.dev 1 points 5 days ago
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