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From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc
Subject: Re: shell architecture (to glob or not to glob)
Message-ID: <3145@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 23 Jan 91 13:28:56 GMT
References: <360@bria> <1991Jan17.185527.9824@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <365@bria> <4584@lib.tmc.edu>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
Lines: 20

In article <4584@lib.tmc.edu> jmaynard@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:

| Unix is at the far end of the scale: it's actively user-hostile. Power to
| the programmer means incomprehensibility to the user. I wouldn't even
| consider handing a user a raw $ or % prompt, X terminal or not. It's simply
| too daunting. Unix' terseness is a win for a programmer, but a major loss
| for a user. It took me two years of running a Unix system at home before I
| got comfortable with it, and I'm a systems programmer by trade. How long
| does it take a user?

  We take new users in with a small writeup on the overall structure and
filename expansion. People starting cold seem to have no trouble with
it, previous DOS users always expect something else and never use pipes
or multiple commands on a line, and Mac people don't seem to have
trouble with it but may prefer a desktop X interface. Amiga users just
seem to use it right off.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
  "I'll come home in one of two ways, the big parade or in a body bag.
   I prefer the former but I'll take the latter" -Sgt Marco Rodrigez