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From: info-atari@ucbvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari
Subject: Re: unix brings back obscurity?
Message-ID: <8601091624.AA03662@pc.Purdue.EDU>
Date: Thu, 9-Jan-86 11:24:47 EST
Article-I.D.: pc.8601091624.AA03662
Posted: Thu Jan  9 11:24:47 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 10-Jan-86 05:39:48 EST
References: <12173670725.8.MRC@PANDA>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: Cybotech Product Development Laboratory
Lines: 36

In article <12173670725.8.MRC@PANDA> you write:
>
>     An operating system that is "not...what [large segments of
>the computer industry] want" is not "absolutely wonderful."  Nor
>is it "efficient", since Unix systems typically spend about 50%
>of the CPU in the operating system.  

   Who cares?  CPU time is cheap, programmer time is not.

>One questions the flexibility
>of an operating system which lacks file locking, record structure,
>and shared writeable pages -- granted these are now being shoehorned
>into Unix, but they should have been in there from the beginning.

   Why should they have been in there since the beginning?  Some of the 
   most powerful database systems in existence run under UNIX.  They seem
   to get by just fine.  What type of record system would you like?  One
   like VMS, one like RSX, one like MACE?  And what happens when you 
   want to move software between the systems?  Some people feel that these
   type of things do not belong in an operating system; I am one of them.

>
>     Are you aware that Dennis Ritchie once said that if he had
>known about Tenex, he never would have invented Unix?  

    So?
>The goal in
>designing Unix were to create an quick and dirty operating system
>on a discarded PDP-7 so a group in Bell Labs (which had been denied
>their purchase request for a newer and large CPU) could get some work
>done.

   And the Greeks invention of geometry was so that they could settle 
   land disputes.  That doesn't make the invention of geometry any less
   significant:  "Necessity is the mother of invention."  That's not 
   original, but it is relevant.