Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ncis.llnl.gov!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!bionet!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!tytso From: tytso@athena.mit.edu (Theodore Y. Ts'o) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Some thoughts about the NeXT machine Message-ID: <8948@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> Date: 27 Jan 89 01:25:10 GMT Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Reply-To: tytso@athena.mit.edu (Theodore Y. Ts'o) Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lines: 66 References: We just received our NeXT machine on Saturday (1/21), and I've had a chance to play with it some. Most of my impressions matched those already posted, so I won't waste bandwidth discussing them :-) My main worry about the system is that may not be ``hacker friendly'' enough. (And by hacker, I mean hacker in the constructive, and _not_ destructive sense. If this bothers you, substitute "good computer programmer" for "hacker") Let me give two examples: The first is the terminal emulator --- it's not perfect, and I've heard from a friend that won't be improved any. Apparently, the terminal emulator was only there to be used while the whiz-bang NeXT interface was being written, and according to her, when asked about getting it to be a full vt100 emulator, and supporting the arrow keys, Steve Jobs said something to effect of, "You're not supposed to use the terminal! Use the NeXT interface!" Wrong answer. Armed with a good version of tcsh, I can run circles around anyone who attempts to use _any_ mouse interface, for the simple reason that in the time to move hands from the keyboard to the mouse, positioning the mouse, and clicking, I can type 10 or more control sequences. Granted, it took me a long time to learn those control sequences, and I don't expect a naive user to know them --- but I know them, and I want to able to use them. The second example is NeXT's position on source code. You might make the case that source code isn't _absolutely_ necessary; but when there is no documentation available --- which is currently the case --- you should at least be able to consult the source code to find out what the heck a program is trying to do. In addition, if I find a bug, I want to able to look at the source code and make sure that it is in fact, Not My Fault. And of course, it's nice to able to fix a bug on the fly, instead of being hand-held by some User Support person (who will assure me it's my fault because I forgot to plug in some cable, or some other nonsence), and then waiting 3-4 weeks for Technical Support to send me a fix. Finally, I want to be able to modify the some system programs to do things my way ---- fully aware the NeXT won't and isn't obliged to support anything I change. Now, I'm well aware that the NeXT isn't targeted for people like me --- the user interface is set up so that any idiot can use it. Quips that only an idiot will want to use it aside, it is the hackers who will be developing applications to run on the NeXT, and it behooves NeXT _not_ to offend them. Instead, NeXT should welcome them, since they're the people who can help make the machine successful. I believe one of the reasons why the IBM PC was so successful is that IBM (surprisingly) freely released all the details about the machine, so that hackers wanted to play with it, and, in the process, they created all sorts of neat programs that users wanted to use --- and so lots of people bought IBM PC's. As far as I'm concerned, one of the great revolutions about the NeXT machine is that it is both User Friendly, with all of the warm, fuzzy dialog boxes, and Hacker Friendly, it running some form of Unix. If weren't hacker friendly, it would be just a high-priced Machintosh, with a few whizzy toys like the sound chip. I hope that Jobs won't throw away this advantage by being needlessly ideological about the NeXT interface being the only one true, Holy, way of accessing the NeXT, and about not releasing source code. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Theodore Ts'o mit-eddie!mit-athena!tytso 3 Ames St., Cambridge, MA 02139 tytso@athena.mit.edu If it's for real, it isn't!