Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnewsc!peter From: peter@cbnewsc.att.com (peter.pavlovcik) Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms Subject: Re: Windows 3 - caveat emptor Message-ID: <1990Sep17.183211.138@cbnewsc.att.com> Date: 17 Sep 90 18:32:11 GMT References: <1990Sep13.021413.28670@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> Distribution: na Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 50 In article , marshall@wind55.seri.gov (Marshall L. Buhl) writes: > I'll take DOS/Windows over Unix any day of the week. DOS is useful for > those who don't intend to make a career out of learning the in and outs > of an operating system. It's for folks who want to get something done - > not memorize zillions of cryptic commands with tons of options. Unix is > very powerful, but far from intuitive. It requires specialists. DOS > does not to that extent. I have heard this argument many times before, but no matter how hard I try, I still can't understand it. I have to assume that you are really comparing command.com and other DOS utilities with one of the UNIX shells and UNIX utilities. The actual "operating system", whether DOS or UNIX is normally only visible to the programmer. Now it should not be difficult to write a "crippled" unix shell and a set of "crippled" utilities that would 100% emulate DOS environment under UNIX. Would that make UNIX "simpler"? And if not, why not -- what is it that would make UNIX "simpler?" I do not have an answer. In my opinion, the "cryptic UNIX commands" that the author refers to are not that much more cryptic than DOS. Can YOU use the "mode" command without looking it up? It takes 8 pages in my DOS manual!! And why does a "simple" command like "copy" require 6 pages? Yes, I agree, a casual user does not need to remember all of these options because he/she does not need to use them. But that is the same in UNIX (at least I think so). I certainly do not want to start a DOS vs. UNIX war, especially not on this newsgroup -- that belongs to alt.religion. Please forgive me, I won't do this again. And I will admit to have a strong pro-UNIX bias. My impression of DOS was always as a "very poor copy of UNIX put together by assembler language hackers". Also writing software for UNIX is so much easier. No EMS, XMS, DPMI, VCPI, far pointers, etc. The same goes for Sunview (for example) vs. MS-Windows. Sunview is trivial to program (and debug) compared to Windows. But I would not be so sure about X -- GUIs may be inherently complex. But I do find Windows quite "barouque". Function calls such as "BringWindowToTop()" are so quaint! There seem to be no overall scheme and design in the application program interface. There were 400+ functions in Windows 2.1. In 3.0 there are over 500. Where does it stop? My brain hurts! But at least it works (for most part, anyway). P.S. Although I am not aware of utilities that would make UNIX look like DOS, we all here love the MKS toolkit, which makes DOS "look" like UNIX. Peter Pavlovcik peter@cbnesc.att.com