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From: chesnutt@adobe.com (Stan Chesnutt)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Ignorance speaks loudest (was:Computers for users not programmers)
Message-ID: <10733@adobe.UUCP>
Date: 5 Feb 91 06:27:49 GMT
References: <3175@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <13632@lanl.gov>
Sender: news@adobe.COM
Reply-To: chesnutt@adobe.COM (Stan Chesnutt)
Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated, Mountain View
Lines: 42

In article <13632@lanl.gov> jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:
	[about another correspondent's comments of Unix design philosophy]
>This is a typical "UNIX speak" type of answer.  The implication is that
>anything UNIX doesn't do is somehow inappropriate for use in a computing
>system.  So we get analogies of bicycle/kitchenware combos.
>
>The problem with this argument is that a number of features are so common
>and so familiar to computer users that it doesn't seem like a whole
>computer without them.  Every mainframe of any note for the last 30
>years has had asynchronous I/O (at least as an option).  For the last
>20 years - its been a standard feature.  For most minis, the feature
>has been common for over a decade.  It's even showing up on (plans
>at least) microcomputers.  Now, you're pretending that this kind of
>feature is somehow strange or out-of-the-ordinary for a system to
>support?  To keep the bicycle analogy, a system without asynchronous
>I/O is like a bike with only one speed - _NOBODY_ makes them like that
>any more!
>
>J. Giles

Thanks, Jim, for pointing this out.

I'll add my own anecdote here.  About a year ago, a friend was excitedly
telling me about the new SunOS (4.0?) features of file mapping (mmap())
and having "shared" library files that would exist in memory once as shared
clients of multiple executables.  Somewhat of a dynamically-linked system,
but with many restrictions.

After my colleague had finished, I mentioned one of the previous incarnations
of this design: the Multics operating system that I used in college.  When my
friend expressed disbelief, I handed over my copy of Organick's "The Multics
System"  Case closed.

We will be seeing a lot more of this Unix monomania in the future, I fear.
This is because progressively more of the university computer centers are
becoming homogenous Unix sites.  While this is not necessarily bad, not
exposing students to a wide variety of system design concepts is very,
very bad.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Stan Chesnutt,  Adobe Systems  chesnutt@adobe.com {sun|decwrl}!adobe!chesnutt
"Hearts full of youth, hearts full of truth. Six parts gin to one part vermouth"