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From: wert.rice@rand-relay@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Your flame about Unix philosophy...right on target.
Message-ID: <11957@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 22-Sep-83 11:32:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.11957
Posted: Thu Sep 22 11:32:12 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Sep-83 02:19:35 EDT
Lines: 29

From:  Scott Comer <wert.rice@rand-relay>

Hear now, what are you complaining about? Don't you enjoy using a system
that is buggy, flaky, and downright unreliable? Doesn't your heart just
go pitty-pat at the prospect of digging into the kernel code for the
answer to yet another annoying "problem" (read that as Undocumented
Feature and/or Restriction)?

I find it strange that Unix is the computer scientists system, but
its design philosophy flys in the face of most of the time-honored
rules of software design, implementation, and documentation. We
daily commit the sin of not practicing what we preach, by telling
our beginning computer science students about the virtues of 
structured design and the importance of good data structures, while
forcing them to use a system that is held together only by the
considerable efforts of 3 systems programmers and lots of bubble
gum and bailing wire.

I realize this is heresy to say things like this. You'll probably point
out that I wouldn't have even be able to read your message if it wasn't
for fine Unix software. On the other hand, I will point out that many
systems are capable of Unix-like functionality, except that they are
lacking a certain sexy user interface. On the other hand, they are
reliable, well documented, maintainable, and supported. By a responsive
and responsible group of people. THEY answer their telephone, which is
more than I can say for Berkeley.

How long is this community going to put up with this utter piece of
software trash?