Path: utzoo!utgpu!bnr-vpa!bnr-fos!bnr-public!schow From: schow@bnr-public.uucp (Stanley Chow) Newsgroups: comp.os.misc Subject: Re: Why Unix is good (was Re: Unix bigotry) LONG Summary: Probably my last word. Message-ID: <303@bnr-fos.UUCP> Date: 22 Feb 89 07:32:22 GMT References: <299@bnr-fos.UUCP> <9579@lanl.gov> Sender: news@bnr-fos.UUCP Reply-To: schow@bnr-public.UUCP (Stanley Chow) Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada Lines: 299 After reading this article again, I realized it is very long and pretty tongue in cheek. [Must be the vacation coming up.] Hope no one takes offense. As summarized in the Summary above, this will probably be my last word on this topic so feel free to flame away. I will probably miss it all when I use catchup. I am giving you a last chance to skip it. In article <9579@lanl.gov> dph@lanl.gov (David Huelsbeck) writes: >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 ...] > At last, I have a come back to people who have used CTSS :-) >>> 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. Ah, finally, someone recognises my great sagely wisdom! I will now pontificate at the ripe old age of 35. Yes, my child, the follies of youth are many and in time, you too, will gain wisdom. >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. > Instead of putting my record on the record (so to speak), I think I will beg off and rely on my great wisdom gained through the ages. Suffice to say that I have been on the computers of IBM and the BUNCH (that sounded so nice, I didn't mind bending the truth). I have also played with (putting it mildly) with Apple II's, throught PC's, to Amigas at home and more than a few minis and mainframes at work. Strangely enough, these experiences lead me to conclude that command lines are independent of "goodness" of system. >I hear there's a pseudo-csh for the Mac now. If the icons are so great >why was this written? Interesting question. Along the same lines, I hear GM is building a small car. If the Cadallics are so good, why is GM building a small car? > >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. Have you ever consider that what a user can learn in a few minutes is all that they *need*? Once, in the distant past in a strange land, I actually met a person who only wanted to get the work done instead of playing with the great toys that were sitting at his desk. He did not play with the kernal, not with the shell, not *even* with startrack!! You know, it's amazing, but there are actually people who don't want to know about computers (hardware of software). Hardware designers have a hard enough time designing hardware that they want a system to *work*. Clerks have enough trouble doing their jobs that want the system to *work*. These people don't want to hack the kernal, they don't even want to be power users, they just want to do their job! >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. Why is it that when I talk about secrataries and clerks, everyone assumes they want to remember *any* commands? For a hacker, by definition, nothing is difficult. Would you consider "mv" to be the natural way to rename a file? Do you consider draging an icon to the trashcan to be a major problem? Come now, for a man who can remember all those commands, this can't be too hard. Last time I looked, most people use one hand for the mouse. Oh, you mean timesharing your hands between the keyboard and the mouse, why didn't you say so. Most people manage to timeshare their hands between cutlery during deals and keyboard during typing, adding the mouse during Mac-Draw is probably not a major problem. Just a note, one of the reason Mac's are nice is that just about all commands are accessable from both the mouse menu and the keyboard. People decide which suits them better and use that; mostly people use the mouse in Mac-Draw and keyboard during Mac-Write. But then, there are always those nit-wits who only use the computer once a month and will use the mouse menu for everything! >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.) > Why would anyone want to? Just take the Mac with you :-) I regularly login to IBM and Unix boxes from home. I have several friends who run BBS on Amiga's so I assume that's possible. I seemed to recall that PC's, wait, even older machines, Appli II, can handle that. Does that make the Apple II a real nice system? Like I said in my posting, the Amiga OS is Unix like and has built-in graphics, windows, multi-tasking, etc. (This is a sutle remainder that you sould read the posting before you flame). Different machines are designed for different purposes. I don't expect anyone to use a Zenith laptop as their simulation engine and I don't expect anyone to take a Cray onto a plane. Why should you want to dial into a Mac? >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. > Watch them insults. I might stop pontificating, then who will you flame? As I said in my posting [another sutle hint], I use Micro-Emacs on my Amiga. Also like I said in my posting, technological baggage [from history] ought not to hold up development. Just because I have a PDP-8 (which is sitting in my living room as a coffee table), you are going to make all your programs compatible with 4K memory? Another thing that comes with age [there I go boasting about my 35 years again] is the realization that different people want different things. I may be happy with a vt-100 since all I do is write reports and software. I doubt very much the VLSI designer next to me will be too happy with it. How about the editors [the people editing papers, not the programs editing files] who want to see the page proof on the screen? I expect your pals doing plasma simulation might be a tad upset if you restrict them to vt100 (or even vt220). Livability is in the eye of the beholder. >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. > Some people want MIPS, you probably want MFLOPS, I want ease of use, others may want 2Kx2K 60 bit color graphics. Just because it's not important to you; don't assume it't not important to me. >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. > I agree with you on the too successful part. I don't quite understand your other part. Just becase I don't like Unix, I have to write a repacement or shutup? Is that the deal? Why do you think I want to? The OS that I managed is doing quite well [total system sales is in the billions of dollars], thank you very much. [Help, there is a terrible echo here, I keep saying the same thing.] At the risk of delabouring my point, different people judge OS by different standards. As I said in my posting, "People care about functionality, researcher care about algorithms, only implementor care about implemenation." Having done my share of implementations, I have now retired to user status with an occasional foray into the domain of philosophy and theory. Please note that these priviledges come only with age and you must wait for your turn. Otherwide, who will work to pay for my pension? >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. > Strange that we should disagree on this point also. I think Unix will be around forever (or what passes for forever in this business). For example, COBOL and FORTRAN are going strong. I do agree that something else will come and supplement it. >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. For a good religous war, see back issues of comp.lang.c & comp.lang.fortran on this very issue. There are many things that make numbers go funny. I image if you stand up and shout this question, you ought to hear some replies from people in your building. If you really want to get into this, talk to me after my vacation. > 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. Count yourself lucky if that is all your problems. How many C programers do you know? How many of them will/can write code without pointers? There aren't that many library/system calls you can make without using pointers. On the otherhand, how many Fortran programers do you know who can get into trobule with pointers? >Quick name a command language that runs on more different machines than >sh does? Quick, name the junior senator from Chicago. (Caught you, Chicago is a city). I bet you a lot more machine run kermit than run sh. So? My Amiga runs sh (and uudecode and zoo and uucp and ...) on its native DOS. What is the point? >Also, if OS/360 docs are anything like VM/CMS docs I'd rather have man >pages thank you. Taking the example in my posting, How many manuals do you need to set up your terminal (say to 132 char/line) in VM/SP? How many man pages do you have to read in Unix? Okay, you know it all and wrote the book on it, how about some rank novice? Stanley Chow ..!utgpu!bnr-vpa!bnr-fos!schow%bnr-public (613) 763-2831 Disclaimer: When I am jolly like this, I don't even let me represent myself. No person or organization would let me represent them anytime.