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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Large programs
Message-ID: <6524@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 6-Oct-87 03:38:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.6524
Posted: Tue Oct  6 03:38:43 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Oct-87 06:13:42 EDT
References: <1046@ius1.cs.cmu.edu> <1130@gilsys.UUCP> <1048@ius1.cs.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
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Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
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One of the things I'm surprised nobody has mentioned yet is that
programs that try to provide everything already nicely packaged for
the user generally do not provide any way to accomplish a new, hitherto
unenvisioned task for which no support was planned in advance.

To take a simple example, not long ago in net.puzzles there were some
questions such as:  What is the longest word containing letters in
alphabetical order?  It is most unlikely that ANY "word processing"
package design would have anticipated such questions; however, it was
quite easy to answer such questions by imaginative combinations of
standard UNIX tools.

This isn't to say that fancy environment packages for naive users are
bad; however, there is a need to support the person who is exploring
new territory as well.  I don't see any way to keep that from
amounting to some form of high-level programmability, either.  That
kind of capability is what attracted many of us to UNIX in the first
place.  Rather than decrying it, it would be far better for those who
want another user interface to develop it AS AN ADDITION TO, not as a
replacement for, the traditional UNIX shell toolkit interface.