Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!ogicse!blake!mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU
From: mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: NeXT and Multics-bashing
Message-ID: <5646@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 7 Feb 90 18:19:54 GMT
Sender: news@blake.acs.washington.edu
Organization: Mendou Zaibatsu, Tomobiki-Cho, Butsumetsu-Shi
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Anyone who claims that "Multics sucked" probably never used Multics or
only used Multics as a casual user.  If Multics (or, for that matter,
Tenex) cycles had been available to Dennis Ritchie when he asked for
them, he never would have written Unix.

It may be said that Tenex and TOPS-20 are powerful operating systems
hidden behind a powerless environment, whereas Unix is a powerless
operating system hidden behind a powerful environment.  The demise of
the former and success of the latter attests to which is more
important today.  Multics, however, was a powerful operating system
with a powerful environment...and died solely due to marketing
(actually, marketing had a good hand in the death of TOPS-20 but
that's another story...).

This relates to the NeXT.  When comp.sys.next first started half of
the messages were from non-NeXT users bashing the NeXT.  I don't know
why they are getting so emotional about it.  If the NeXT fails, it
fails.  The existing NeXT's out there will still be perfectly good
Unix boxes.  Most of the Unix fanatics here are NeXT users, and not a
few of them switched from SUN, etc. gear to the NeXT.  Most of them
don't care all that much about NeXTStep or NeXT the company.  Right
now, the NeXT is one of the most pleasant Unix boxes to use.

Where NeXT is more likely to lose it is in dumb things like refusing
to come up with a good terminal emulator.  The problem with Communicae
is that it costs money.  It should be bundled with the NeXT.

I'm the most heavily involved with NeXTStep development in my group.
But that is really peripheral to my real work, which is expressed in
totally portable code.  Yes, application startup is a bit slow at
times and I wish printing didn't eat my machine alive.  But virtually
all of the time I am sitting in the editor.  When I compile, it
generally happens fast enough, even with big and complex Objective-C
files, that I don't have enough time to get a cup of coffee before
it's finished.  Most of the time the machine is waiting for me instead
of the other way around.

So the NeXT serves me just fine as a development tool.  Would I buy
one as a home computer?  Probably not.  I would be quite happy to
accept one though.  It's not a machine to get all emotional over, but
it serves.

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