Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!leah!rpi!pawl!shadow From: shadow@pawl.rpi.edu (Deven T. Corzine) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: Minix, Unix on the Amiga, and flames on AmigaDOS braindamage... Message-ID: Date: 2 Aug 89 19:08:52 GMT References: <1610@uw-entropy.ms.washington.edu> <195@VAX1.CC.UAKRON.EDU> <513@titan.tsd.arlut.utexas.edu> <1332@osupyr.mps.ohio-state.edu> Sender: usenet@rpi.edu Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY Lines: 43 In-reply-to: vkr@osupyr.mps.ohio-state.edu's message of 2 Aug 89 18:26:15 GMT On 2 Aug 89 18:26:15 GMT, vkr@osupyr.mps.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath K. Rao) said: In article shadow@pawl.rpi.edu (Deven T. Corzine) writes: On 1 Aug 89 12:54:54 GMT, lofaso@titan.tsd.arlut.utexas.edu (Bernie Lofaso) said: Bernie> There is also a more elegance of design to the AmigaDos system. Deven> AmigaDOS? More elegant than Unix? Don't make me laugh. vkr> I would say that AmigaDOS looks like a project from a B student: vkr> A good concept, but implementation shows lack of imagination and vkr> more importantly, inability to adapt to a different evoirment: vkr> Relying on BCPL thruout is only one instance of it. Another vkr> example [why I would give the implementation a B rather than an vkr> A] is packets implemented to support only co-routines, hijacking vkr> of the Message.Node.Name field etc. But I side with Bernie: vkr> Conceptually, AmigaDOS is more evolved than Unix. But then, it vkr> did come latter. Ah, yes. But though Unix far predated AmigaDOS, the developers of AmigaDOS seem to have thrown away many of the good ideas of Unix. [I don't know why they didn't use more Unix-like things (real pipes, a hierarchical filesystem without backpointers, filesystem links, fork/exec, file descriptor handling, etc.) but I have heard [unsubstantiated] rumors of a prejudice against Unix by the developers. Exec, on the other hand, I would qualify as superior to Unix in a number of ways. [call it an A for design and an A- for implementation.] AmigaDOS has some good ideas, but a lot of things done in a very poor fashion. [B+ for design, C- for implementation.] Deven -- Deven T. Corzine Internet: deven@rpi.edu, shadow@pawl.rpi.edu Snail: 2214 12th Street, Troy, NY 12180 Phone: (518) 271-0750 Bitnet: deven@rpitsmts, userfxb6@rpitsmts UUCP: uunet!rpi!deven Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.