Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wuarchive!uwm.edu!linac!att!pacbell.com!pacbell!rtech!mtxinu!ed From: ed@mtxinu.COM (Ed Gould) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Ware Ware Wizardjin (was Re: readline bashing (was POSIX bashing)) Message-ID: <1991Apr7.103921.22660@mtxinu.COM> Date: 7 Apr 91 10:39:21 GMT References: <70319@brunix.UUCP> <27F43DE6.4B53@wilbur.coyote.trw.com> <564@bria> <1991Apr04.025733.18462@decuac.dec.com> <1991Apr5.072447.4432@mtxinu.COM> <25649@hydra.gatech.EDU> <12535@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> Reply-To: ed@mtxinu.COM (Ed Gould) Organization: mt Xinu, Berkeley Lines: 21 >Gee, listening to some wizards, you'd think the bad old days had >come back when computer time was more important than human time, >and Herculian feats of engineering were required to make the computer >do much of anything. That's not the point at all. The point is that most of the cycles used by fancy GUIs don't help productivity - or usability by novices - at all. What they do is paint extra goo on the screen, and they do it badly at that. There are at least two high-powered systems for managing bitmapped displays that do not wast all those cycles (MGR and Plan 9), Even the Macintosh makes better use of its graphics and processor resources than does X. Remember the original Mac? It had a fairly slow 68000 (not an '010 or '020) and a *total* of 128KB of RAM. A lot of people got very useful work done on it. Many of them were novices. -- Ed Gould No longer formally affiliated with, ed@mtxinu.COM and certainly not speaking for, mt Xinu. "I'll fight them as a woman, not a lady. I'll fight them as an engineer."