Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!rutgers!att!alberta!dvinci!zaphod!bobd
From: bobd@zaphod.UUCP (Bob Dalgleish)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: VMS vs. UNIX s/w development tools - query
Summary: Roll your own
Keywords: VMS UNIX tools
Message-ID: <2936@zaphod.UUCP>
Date: 11 Apr 89 20:14:56 GMT
References: <600@mitisft.Convergent.COM>
Reply-To: bobd@zaphod.UUCP (Bob Dalgleish)
Organization: Develcon Electronics, Saskatoon SK Canada
Lines: 33

The major difference between Un*x and V*S is that it is EASY to write
your own tools in Un*x.  The use of pipes means that homomorphic
transformations can be applied one after the other until you get the
desired result: read this as functional decomposition.  When pipes are
expensive, inconvenient, or awkward to use, the software developers
spend less time writing simple tools to help them in their work and
more time doing things by hand or using the supplied tools.

There is no argument that the programs available on V*S are better or
worse than those on Un*x.  The argument is whether it is easy to put
several tools together to make one that does the job that *I* want done
right now.  Remember, Man is the tool-MAKING animal.  Many other
animals use tools (birds, monkeys, otters, etc.).  Spending a small
time to put tools into one's bag of tricks makes one much more
effective as a software developer.

The shells that run on V*S cannot hide all of the differences.  The
architecture of V*S assumes monolithic applications with well-defined
interfaces that start up, run for a (relatively) long time, and get
ready for the next request; Un*x assumes small applications that come
and go as they please, creating and destroying files readily.
Consequently, Un*x shells run slowly and awkwardly, destroying any
advantage that might have been gained by making your own tools.  Any
argument that writing a C program to more efficiently do the job is
absurd; the expensive part of the process is the programmer time, not
the machine time.  It takes me 5 minutes to design, implement and test a
simple three stage shell script to do some straight-forward analysis; it
takes me one day to design, write, and test the same code in C.  With
that trade-off, which do you think I would prefer?  How about you?

-- 
--[ It is good to be back in the saddle ]--
Bob Dalgleish		bobd@zaphod.UUCP