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From: srt@maui.cs.ucla.edu (Scott Turner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Now that the smoke had cleared (Honest Mac/IBM questions)
Message-ID: <30290@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 29 Dec 89 20:52:00 GMT
References: <1284@marlin.NOSC.MIL> <970@v7fs1.UUCP> <129727@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
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Reply-To: srt@cs.ucla.edu (Scott Turner)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
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In article <129727@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> acm@sun.UUCP (Andrew MacRae) writes:
>You sound like the Scottish farmer asking the city dweller how many 
>bales of hay his Jaguar can carry, then not understanding why anyone
>would want a vehicle that can't carry hay.

I get about a bale and a half into my XK120.  Not legal in Solo II, 
you understand.  :-)

>The basic paradigms (don't you love that word?) of the two operating
>systems are so different it simply doesn't make sense to ask the
>questions you are asking.

Differing computing paradigms but the same task paradigm.  Rephrase
the question slightly: How do I take the output from my test program,
pull out the column of numbers I'm interested in, sort it, and print
it on my LW?  Not terribly difficult in the PC/Unix world - you just
string together some tools "test | awk | sort | print" or whatever.
Nearly impossible on the Mac.

Similarly the question of looking at files not in the current
(environment i.e., directory in DOS/Unix, folder in Mac-ese).  That's
a task you often want to perform, and one that is annoyingly hard on
the Mac.  (And sometimes also difficult under DOS/Unix, which is by no
means perfect.)

So I don't think you can toss these questions off as paradigm
differences.  They address real tasks that the poster expects to
encounter in his day-to- day computing.  A better response might be to
explain why he won't be involved in those tasks if he gets a Mac.

			

 
    Scott R. Turner
    UCLA Computer Science     "Become a Doktor of Forbidden Sciences"
    Domain: srt@cs.ucla.edu