Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!unm-la!lanl!dph From: dph@lanl.gov (David Huelsbeck) Newsgroups: comp.os.misc Subject: Re: Why Unix is good (was Re: Unix bigotry) LONG Message-ID: <9579@lanl.gov> Date: 21 Feb 89 11:39:56 GMT References: <299@bnr-fos.UUCP> Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory Lines: 118 From article <299@bnr-fos.UUCP>, by schow@bnr-public.uucp (Stanley Chow): > [...a lot of standard Unix-commands-are-ugly complaints ...] > In article <7911@boring.cwi.nl> jack@cwi.nl (Jack Jansen) writes: >> [...agrees, then goes on to tacitly boast about how long he's been computing by talking about how bad OS/360 was/is ...] >> MSDOS < UNIX <<<<<<< Macintosh. > > As a matter of fact, I have used OS/360. I have no problem in hating it > but I would not say it is worse than Unix, just bad in different ways. > Also, no one seriousely suggests OS/360 (MVS, ...) as a real interactive > system, for batch systems, it has a certain perverted appeal. > > There is one major point in favor of OS/360: you can always find the > information in the obvious manual AND you can trust the information. > Would you say that about Unix? :-) > > As to MS/DOS, would you really put Unix in the same class as MS/OOS? > It isn't really fair to compare an 8088 on floppy to an 68030 > with a fast 60 MB drive and ethernet. :-) :-) > > MS/DOS can get by with so few commands is that users (like me) use it > to get into an application and forget about MS/DOS. (That shows you > what I think about MS/DOS.) > > > Have you looked that Amiga? It has a well thought out (comparatively) > kernal interface that accomadates graphics, windows, multi-tasking, > etc.. Many Unix hackers like it because of the flexibility and power > like Unix but a very efficent system and clean interface. > > > > Stanley Chow ..!utgpu!bnr-vpa!bnr-fos!schow%bnr-public > (613) 763-2831 > > > Disclaimer: What? Me? Have an opinion? Surely you jest. > Represent any one? Ha, I don't even represent myself. Well I may be a young, upstart, punk (I think I was born post-OS/360) but I think a lot of you old guys are full of barnyard animal excrement. The first system I used (not counting C64 BASIC) was VM/CMS I then learned MS-DOS (not much different from C64 BASIC), Unix, CTSS (Cray Time Sharing System) and most recently VMS. I logged in to a NOS machine twice to read some tapes. I have also spent a fair amount of time using Mac's. These experiences have led me to the conclusion that any system that lets you have a command line is better than any that doesn't. I hear there's a pseudo-csh for the Mac now. If the icons are so great why was this written? Unlike social systems I think OSs are best measured by how well they treat the best users not the worst. Sure any three year old can learn to use a Mac in a few minutes but the experienced user is stuck with that preschool interface for the rest of his life. Unix commands are no harder to remember than any other. Even if commands are supposedly plain English which English word do you use? Is it "delete", "remove", "purge", "kill" or what? I've seen all of these for the same task. Seems like "rm" ought to be as easy to remember as clover-key whatever, and unless you have three hands "rm foo" is a hell of a lot less effort than reaching for the mouse. Have you ever remotely logged into a Mac from a vt100? How would you go about doing that? What about an Amiga? (I suspect the later is possible.) Many people still have vt100's and similar equipment. With "screen" and GNU Emacs a vt100 is a very livable environment. If you actually use "vi" day to day you're getting what you deserve. Then again if you really like XEDIT Emacs might be too much for you. However, as has been pointed out before, none of X-Windows, SunView, NeWS, screen, Emacs, or vi is Unix. Neither is XEDIT VM/CMS or MVS. There are definitely problems with Unix (and C) but I don't believe either of you has addressed any of them. As people here are being forced to look seriously at something supposedly similar to Unix as a production environment for supercomputers the difference between deficiencies with substance and the sort of syntactic fluff you're complaining about are becoming more obvious. My personal belief is that Unix has been too successful for it's own good. I think people are trying to make it do things that it was never intended to do and it's straining under the load. It has been pointed out by other posters that this situation has a simple solution. One of you guys that knows why Unix stinks and how an OS ought to be can write one. Then you can either port it to a few hundred different platforms yourself or you can convince enough other people that it's so keen that they'll port it for you. Seriously, I think that this will eventually happen with some OS that comes out of a research environment. It stands to reason that Unix will not be around forever. However I think the chance that this will happen with one of it's current vendor specific competitors is zero. As for portablity, what would a numbers-in-numbers-out code do to be non-portable? There are reasons to use FORTRAN instead of C but I don't see that portability is one of them. Clearly doing funky things with pointers can make a C code non-portable but there's no law or reason that says you have to do that. Just stick to staticly allocated arrays of scalars (your only choice in *STANDARD* FORTRAN) and I think C will be just a portable as FORTRAN. Perhaps more so. I'm having problems right now with some "portable", standard FORTRAN 77 because the standard does not define a stdin/stdout, argv/argc type convention. Quick name a command language that runs on more different machines than sh does? Also, if OS/360 docs are anything like VM/CMS docs I'd rather have man pages thank you. The US Govt., DOE, UC and LANL have people that are paid to let you know what their official opinions are; I am not one of those people. -dph