Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!hybrid!scifi!bywater!uunet!bria!mike Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: How wrong is MS-DOS? (or: What is the definition of obsolete) Message-ID: <348@bria> Date: 14 Jan 91 03:07:24 GMT References: <343@bria> <11123@lanl.gov> Reply-To: uunet!bria!mike (Michael Stefanik) Organization: Briareus Corporation, Los Angeles, CA Lines: 87 In article <11123@lanl.gov> lanl.gov!jlg (Jim Giles) writes: >I disagree with the premise of the above. UNIX certainly has _more_ >tools, but the individual tools on MS-DOS tend to be more _powerful_. >The tools on UNIX tend to be clustered into a few categories: [ Continues on about how grep is trivial, UNIX tools are backwards, etc. ] Jim, if UNIX tools are *so* trivial, weak, mundane, and useless, why in the hell are people porting them to MS-DOS? Why is there a vi, emacs, grep, ls, chmod, etc? Heck, there is even a company (forget the name off the top of my head ... Mortice Kern something?) that's has a whole business devoted to providing a UNIX environment in DOS (at least tool-wise). This is a *lot* of energy thats being devoted to such trivial, weak, mundane, and useless programs. Oh, and I found it charming how you lumped compilers in with "mundane" tools. I don't know about you buddy, but that is how I earn my daily bread. >Part of the problem with UNIX is that it tends to be monolithic and >obscure. That's why so much is typically 'bundled' with it: there's >so many things needed just to get the system working and keep it >working. Let's not generalize now. Ever hear of Mach? I am a strong believer in the concept of "kernel as a message passer", but what has this got to to with DOS? Are you trying to say that DOS is less monolithic than UNIX? Give me a break. >Finally, you make the claim that UNIX tools are fun to use. Now, this >may be a personality thing. [ some tripe about how tools are like an adventure game ...] >try every utility you hear about in every manner you can think of until >something useful happens; then memorize what you did to get that useful >functionality - because it doesn't make any sense which things turn out >to be useful and which don't, it's just a matter of memorization. Is this how you went about learning UNIX? Ever hear of manual pages? Ever hear of apropos? There is a right tool for the job, and dammit, it isn't that hard to find it. >Note: in order to disarm the usual ad hominem flame from UNIX proponents >I must tell you that I have used UNIX every working day for about a decade >now. I know it reasonably well. So don't hit me with the usual "he's >obviously never used UNIX and doesn't know what he's talking about" >routine. It won't wash. In what context were you using UNIX? As an administrator? An applications programmer? A systems programmer? It seems as though you have completely misunderstood the *philosophy* behind UNIX, and yes, there certainly is one. UNIX is tools-oriented, which simply stated is: it is better to write one small program which does one thing *very* well, rather than one large program that does everything in a mediocre fashion. The DOS mentality does not encompass the tools philosophy because, by and large, it is unworkable on DOS. The philosophy has the concepts of multitasking (or whatever you prefer to call it) inherent in it's infra- structure; since DOS cannot multitask, and the best it can do is a enormously weak impersonation of anonymous pipes, DOS is not a good environment for the tools approach to problem solving. So, you see, grep is not meant to be a program used all by itself; it's use is for interaction with other tools. I find the pipe to be a simple and elegant solution to communication between processes; the anonymous pipe preserves the interchangability of tools, which is extremely important. In music, any one note is just a vibration at a certain frequency; when they are put *together*, they make a symphony. Don't expect to write symphonies with a single note ... it's not realistic. To be happy with the UNIX environment, you have to understand and accept it's philosophy of tools. I don't think you do. If UNIX truly makes you that uncomfortable, then why use it? Just so you understand where I'm coming from, for me, the implementation of a particular UNIX is far less important than the philosophy that it is built upon. Although various flavors of UNIX have good and bad in them, the idea which created them is a great one, and will continue on. -- Michael Stefanik, Systems Engineer (JOAT), Briareus Corporation UUCP: ...!uunet!bria!mike -- technoignorami (tek'no-ig'no-ram`i) a group of individuals that are constantly found to be saying things like "Well, it works on my DOS machine ..."