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From: reintom@rocky2.UUCP (Tom Reingold)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: Unix, Unixpeople, Usenix - from a no
Message-ID: <137@rocky2.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-Oct-85 18:00:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: rocky2.137
Posted: Fri Oct 18 18:00:43 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Oct-85 06:32:13 EDT
References: <458@isucs1.UUCP>
Organization: Rockefeller Univ., N.Y.C. 10021
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> I also enjoyed the original article.  I have been a UNIX user/maintainer for
> many years, but I also become annoyed with the lack of good documentation.
> After experiencing the "other" VAX operating system, students are willing to
> invest the time in learning UNIX and seem to get a big payoff in terms of
> improving their productivity.  But, for casual computer users, UNIX has
> been less than successful here.  Can anyone recommend good UNIX books
> with readable command summaries that are targeted to less experienced
> computer users?  Thanks.

Since it's a good programming environment -- possibly the best, it
should be possible for a programmer to write programs and user
environments that a casual user can work comfortably with.  Why
this has not been done a lot yet is a mystery to me but it IS
possible.  Maybe we programmers love UNIX so much that we hope the
casual users ought to explore it and learn to love it in the way we
do.  This would be a bad attitude in most cases, and should be
avoided whenever possible.

Tom Reingold