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From: drake@drake
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt
Subject: Re: RS/6000 survey - will post summary
Keywords: Time to get some real-world opinions
Message-ID: <1698@ks.UUCP>
Date: 7 May 90 17:23:33 GMT
References: <11111@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> <50279@lanl.gov> <1990May4.222715.23648@cs.utk.edu> <10036@stiatl.UUCP> <1990May6.212646.20580@cs.utk.edu>
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Organization: IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose
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Opinions expressed below are my own, not necessarily my employer's.

In article <1990May6.212646.20580@cs.utk.edu> moore@cs.utk.edu (Keith Moore) writes:
>                                                      Or how about the
>fact that nearly all of the utilities now have verbose error messages,
>even when the old terse message was sufficient?  

1.  If you want to see old terse messages, issue:

    export LANG=C

    The new design allows old hands such as yourself to be happy,
    while making a system that real people can use as well.  This is
    bad?  

2.  Who decides when an "old terse message is sufficient"?  Were they
    sufficient to secretaries?  Or just to hackers?  

3.  The AIX 3 enhancements in this area were primarily dictated by
    (a) usability and (b) national language support requirements.
    The new system is much more flexible in that it can be marketed in
    languages other than English ... a legal requirement in a growing
    number of countries.

>What bothers me most is that all of the above, and nearly every bug
>I've seen, is the result of changes that have been made to software
>that *already works* as distributed by AT&T, UCB, or whoever...at
>least the copies on our source tapes work reasonably well.

But then you're a native English speaker, used to hacker-ese, and
are quite happy with software whose limitations are therefore not apparent to
you.  Nor, apparently, does your installation want C2 security in it's
operating system, which neither UCB nor AT&T ship today.  

It's easy to say "this used to work and they broke it...they're morons".
It's harder to look at the increased value versus the increased complexity
and make a fair assessment.  If the UCB tapes contain all the function
you need and desire, then AIX 3 will look overly complex.  But most folks
can't live with such a system.  National language support, standards
compliance, DoD security, improved DASD management, etc are all legitimate
requirements that the UCB tapes ignore, and that EVERY vendor is working
on adding to their systems.


Sam Drake / IBM Almaden Research Center 
Internet:  drake@ibm.com            BITNET:  DRAKE at ALMADEN
Usenet:    ...!uunet!ibmarc!drake   Phone:   (408) 927-1861