I spent a fair bit of my career working with a piece of software which has evolved across a number of different operating systems, and, one presumes, development teams.
Among the reasons I refer to myself, tongue in cheek, as a software anthropologist, is what I'd recognised from that software: it bears the marks of the major platforms it evolved through: IBM mainframes, VMS, Unix, MS Windows, and ultimately an Apple Macintosh variant (though principally the tool now seems to be PC-oriented).
Similarly, on Unix, one can often identify applications' origins based on their toolkits and widgets: Athena Xaw widgets, Motif, VUE, KDE, GNOME, etc. Though often criticised for the lack of consistency, I'm aware that different tools reveal their affordances by the toolkits (and GUI presentation and behaviour) they reveal. Similarly BSD vs. GNU command-line tools, and various other command origins. Particularly notably, the 'dd' command, which comes from, and borrows syntax from, IBM TCL, a mainframe environment.
Digging deeper, Unix's origins in Multics, the B programming language, etc., are also apparent.
Again, this is somewhat confounding tools and teams, though I'd suggest that the principles are similar and related. The upshot is that past decisions get layered into software, with the oldest layers typically closest to the core.
Among the reasons I refer to myself, tongue in cheek, as a software anthropologist, is what I'd recognised from that software: it bears the marks of the major platforms it evolved through: IBM mainframes, VMS, Unix, MS Windows, and ultimately an Apple Macintosh variant (though principally the tool now seems to be PC-oriented).
Similarly, on Unix, one can often identify applications' origins based on their toolkits and widgets: Athena Xaw widgets, Motif, VUE, KDE, GNOME, etc. Though often criticised for the lack of consistency, I'm aware that different tools reveal their affordances by the toolkits (and GUI presentation and behaviour) they reveal. Similarly BSD vs. GNU command-line tools, and various other command origins. Particularly notably, the 'dd' command, which comes from, and borrows syntax from, IBM TCL, a mainframe environment.
Digging deeper, Unix's origins in Multics, the B programming language, etc., are also apparent.
Again, this is somewhat confounding tools and teams, though I'd suggest that the principles are similar and related. The upshot is that past decisions get layered into software, with the oldest layers typically closest to the core.