Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!ucsd!rutgers!mailrus!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi
From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: More John Dvorak comments
Message-ID: <3836@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: 1 Sep 88 18:47:54 GMT
References: <18509@neabbs.UUCP> <24516@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <31930@clyde.ATT.COM> <6414@chinet.UUCP> <797@mccc.UUCP>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 47

In article <797@mccc.UUCP> pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) writes:
>Hi, Ward.  You probably find those easier to remember because you have
>been using them since CP/M 1.4 - at least.  I wonder which would be
>easier to remember if you had started with UNIX.

Good point.  I've seen VAX/VMS users attempt to create a VMS-like
environment on a UNIX system by defining all sorts of aliases.  Me, I
prefer to define symbols such as "df", "pwd", and "cd" for VMS
equivalents such as "show quota", "show default" and "set default".  I
rather like saying "ls" instead of  "dir" because it's 67% less
typing :-) and I can say "ls" on all systems I use if I define the
appropriate synonyms everywhere.  (Actually, on MS-DOS systems, I use
"d" and "ls" to invoke non-MS-DOS directory listers, since the MS-DOS
style of listing filenames in the order they happen to be randomly
scattered about on disk is not to my taste.  I leave "dir" alone
and don't use it.)

Some would claim that "mkdir" and "rmdir" are more understandable than
"md" and "rd".  MS-DOS allows both, and I use the shorter forms
all the time.

Some years ago, I was using a TOPS-20 system that, according to most of
its users, has the friendliest user interface anywhere.  As soon as I
located a macro language for that environment, I proceeded to create
UNIX equivalents:  partly so I could use the same commands everywhere,
and partly because only UNIX has a standard "ls -R" command that
displays names in a meaningful compact form.  (Obviously it was a
powerful macro language that would let you recreate that output
format.)

I never say the UNIX user interface is the best.  I do say I prefer it
to any other I have tried, and I have tried them all:  VMS, MS-DOS,
CP/M, TOPS-20, RT-11, RSX-11, TRS-DOS/LDOS, Macintosh (ugh), VM/CMS
(gave up very quickly).  Lack of convenient I/O redirection eliminates
all but a handful of these, lack of a structured command language from
the keyboard eliminates all the rest.  (The Macintosh is eliminated
even before we start, because it doesn't have any command language at
all, just cute little pictures that won't let me do something as
trivial as copy one disk to another without gymnastic gyrations.  Not
will it let me compile and run a C program that is impertinent enough
to expect argc and argv to be supplied by the operating environment.)

Since only UNIX was left on the list, I soon memorized its few
essential commands (cp, cat, mv, rm, cd, mkdir, rmdir, ls).  It takes
about a day to do this, so anybody who complains about them beyond the
first day probably has a taco-flavored tortilla chip on his shoulder.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi