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From: jimomura@lsuc.UUCP (Jim Omura)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari,net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: In defense of J. Demar (Bit longer than I wanted)
Message-ID: <855@lsuc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-Oct-85 17:43:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: lsuc.855
Posted: Fri Oct 18 17:43:59 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 18-Oct-85 19:20:04 EDT
References: <869@cvl.UUCP> <297@graffiti.UUCP>
Reply-To: jimomura@lsuc.UUCP (Jim Omura)
Distribution: net
Organization: Barrister & Solicitor, Toronto
Lines: 48
Xref: utcs net.micro.atari:1392 net.micro.amiga:417
Summary: Credentials Please ...

In article <297@graffiti.UUCP> peter@graffiti.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
>I think what he means to say is that "DIR" is an external program, like UNIX'
>ls, not a built-in like MS-DOS' "dir". To get a directory in CLI it loads
>a file called ":/c/Dir" and executes it. Since there are disks without CLI *or*
>dir on them, and they do have directories, it's pretty obvious that they're
>not hidden inside a program. Especially not one that's itself 2 levels deep
>in the directory tree. I would like to suggest that Mr. Demar is less than
>well acquainted with the machine...

     In this much I think I agree.  I've said before on other systems
that memory resident utilities aren't always a good idea.  It impinges
on user memory, whereas generally it's not critical to maximize their
speed (sorry, I meant to say 'they impinge').  Most of my day is taken
up using terminal emulators and word processing.  On my system directory
calls take a fair bit of time.  It's really not that important.

     If you want to razz somebody on this point you can say to them
"hey man, don't you ever do any *work* with your computer, what do you
do just copy and delete files all day?" -- then duck fast.

>
>And why wasn't net.micro.amiga included in the distribution of this message?
>Maybe because some people who actually *have* an Amiga and understand it are
>more likely to respond to it?
>
>Anyway... you can regain your respect for AMIGAdos. It's not UNIX by any means,
>but it is certainly an improvement over Crummy-Dos, Trash-Dos, Messy-Dos, or
>any of the other little computer "operating systems".

     But I have to disagree with this.  Have you ever worked on the
computers you've just slighted?  I don't like Commodore's DOS (I assume
that's the first one you meant), but the Shack's DOS is quite good.  In
fact, probably better than the Amiga DOS from what I've heard so far.
I'll reserve judgement.  MS-DOS isn't that bad either.  It could have
been better, but it's development was originally an outgrowth of CP/M.

     As for other 'little computer "operating systems"', ahem, like
Unix maybe?  Or OS-9?  I have heard *nothing* which indicates *any*
superiority of AMIGAdos as such over OS-9 in *any* way.  But, mainly
remember that even Unix *started* as a small OS.  It just grew a lot.


-- 
James Omura, Barrister & Solicitor, Toronto
ihnp4!utzoo!lsuc!jimomura
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