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From: acm@bu-cs.BU.EDU (ACM)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: A different View of the value of OS/2 - it's better than UNIX
Message-ID: <12908@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: Mon, 14-Sep-87 11:54:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.12908
Posted: Mon Sep 14 11:54:21 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Sep-87 02:30:52 EDT
References: <494@parcvax.Xerox.COM>
Reply-To: madd@bucsb.bu.edu (Jim "Jack" Frost)
Organization: Boston University ACM
Lines: 55
Keywords: market acceptance of UNIX lacking

In article <494@parcvax.Xerox.COM> burton@parcvax.Xerox.COM (Philip M. Burton) writes:
>Howeer, most users are funny.  They really don't care about the OS, or the chip,
>or the tracks per inch of the floppy drive.  All they want is to get their
>work done with minimal hassle.  And, most people won't/can't learn much about
>their systems, except to turn it on, load their applications, print results,
>
>DOS is popular because it makes very few demands upon the user.  [...]
>
>Now, for the average user who is terrified of installing Wordstar or backing
>up files, or who uses a hard disk without any subdirectories [too much trouble
>to get them to work right], let's tell that person about UNIX. Any version.
>
>[...] Compare the simplicity of
>typing A: to get to the floppy with the RTFM-type syntax of UNIX.  
>
>Now, let's tell them that the filesystem can easily be corrupted, and that
>there are stringent requirements for getting it back up.  You've lost that
>person as a paying customer.  What's a filesystem?  Corruption?  (Is that
>like politics in Boston or Chicago, or is that like AIDS??)  

He has a fantastic point.  Consider my example:

I work for a small accounting firm in NH.  We recently installed a
multiuser PC environment (basically a LAN but really a clustered CPU
system).  I got the tedious task of explaining to a secretary how to
work the system.  I ended up making batch files for EVERYTHING.  If
she wants to do a backup she has to bring the system down (multiuser
environments make backups more tricky).  I explain how to do this
without getting users mad.  Now, getting the backup started was more
complicated since you had to bring the system up in single-user mode.
The best way was to make a batch file and ask her plain-English
questions:

	Do you want to do a backup? [y/n]

If she does, the system doesn't go into multiuser mode and instead
runs the backup program.  Our secretary who does most of the DP work
understands; the others can't even handle something this simple.

Unfortunately the younger generation that grew up with micros are
getting exposed to very single-user systems (eg Commodore-64, Apple
//, IBM PC) so they, even though more saavy than their parents, still
will have problems with UNIX.  I know -- I also work as a terminal
assistant in the Comp. Sci. terminal room.  I see users every day who
say "well my IBM PC doesn't do it that way!"

It's too bad.  I see the power of UNIX.  But I also see that not
everyone wants to learn what the machine can do.  So you end up with a
popular, although braindamaged, OS.  What's a poor programmer to do?

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
          Jim Frost * The Madd Hacker | UUCP: ..!harvard!bu-cs!bucsb!madd
  H H                                 | ARPA:           madd@bucsb.bu.edu
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  H H                       | "We are strangers in a world we never made"