Xref: utzoo comp.arch:4524 comp.lang.misc:1511
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!ncc!alberta!calgary!radford
From: radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Universal OS (striving for flexibility)
Message-ID: <1556@vaxb.calgary.UUCP>
Date: 27 Apr 88 20:26:19 GMT
References: <769@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU> <76700017@uiucdcsp> <843@actnyc.UUCP> <762@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Organization: U. of Calgary, Calgary, Ab.
Lines: 38

In article <762@l.cc.purdue.edu>, cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:

> ... The language, shell, window, editor, etc. developers
> should try to find out everything that a programming genius would consider
> including (and do not rely on what one genius wants; ask everybody) and try
> to include it _all_.  In addition, the (whatever) should be designed so that
> any used can expand it easily, because I can not tell you today about the
> feature which I will consider "obviously" needed tomorrow.
> 
> -- 
> Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907


GAK! Have you ever _tried_ designing, and implementing, a language, 
editor, etc.? The last thing you want to do is include everything
anybody has ever thought might possibly be a good idea. Even the 
designers of Ada occasiionally realized this, and left out, for example,
SNOBOL-style pattern matching (how could they? its so powerfull...)
and the ability to write programs in the style of Backus's FP (What? but
that's the wave of the future...).

As for "extensibility", it is much over-rated. Somehow, it always seems
that the really useful modifications are beyond the capabilities of the
extension mechanism. Quick, how can I write a Mock Lisp extension to
emacs to let it handle proportionally-spaced fonts? I don't think it's
even possible to fix the brain-damaged way it does auto-indent... To
exaggerate slightly, the main purpose of extensibility in systems is to
give the designer an excuse (well, if you don't like that, why don't you
change it yourself? ... What? I though everyone knew Lisp...).

A universal operating system will be designed when someone very clever,
imaginative, and artistic creates a reasonably simple model of computer 
use that encorportates the needs of all users and is economically
implementable in the technology of the day. If this should ever occur,
the universal model will be much more likely to encorporate _none_ of
the ideas of past "programming geniuses" than to encorporate them all.

    Radford Neal