The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#71

Post by arethuza » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:35 PM UTC

reacweb wrote: post #26

panic wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The contemporary windowing system NeWS is worth a look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS Its architecture was more similar to modern web apps, with the UI running code and processing events on the client machine.

I remember it. It was far prettier than motif at that time. And Framemaker was so pleasant to use compared to Word. Both NeWS and NeXT were using Display Postscript ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_PostScript ). Do you know if NeWS was an inspiration for NeXT ?

Other than using PostScript for 2D rendering I don't think NeWS and Display Postscript had much in common.

In NeWS you could write your client applications completely in PostScript (or something compiled down to PostScript) and it had its own object-oriented, multi-threaded environment with event handling etc.

NeWS was more of a predecessor for Java than NeXT.

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#72

Post by arethuza » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:37 PM UTC

tragomaskhalos wrote: post #38

hbex5 wrote: post #3

If I ever need to feel good about myself as a software developer, I only ever need to read this book's chapter about the X window system.

An office I worked in in the early 90's had a shelf with a ten(?) volume set of X windows books - and each individual book was a thick bugger. I'd only had fleeting experience of it, but remember thinking "how complex can this thing be ?!"

I think a lot of those books covered stuff that most people writing applications never really had to worry about - I'm pretty sure I got by with one on Xlib and maybe one on Xt?

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#73

Post by dsmithatx » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:38 PM UTC

When I read this 20 years ago I would never have believed I'd be typing this on a Mac laptop running yet another Unix variant. This line is now so funny...

As for me? I switched to the Mac. No more grep, no more piping, no more SED scripts. Just a simple, elegant life: “Your application has unexpectedly quit due to error number –1. OK?”

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#74

Post by ptero » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:42 PM UTC

dsmithatx wrote: post #73

When I read this 20 years ago I would never have believed I'd be typing this on a Mac laptop running yet another Unix variant. This line is now so funny... As for me? I switched to the Mac. No more grep, no more piping, no more SED scripts. Just a simple, elegant life: “Your application has unexpectedly quit due to error number –1. OK?”

You beat me to that respose! The book is a great fun to read. I read it in grad school 20 years ago (where Unix was the only option if you wanted to write your articles in TeX) and re-read it with much pleasure today (when 75% of my computer time is spent, by choice, on Linux variants)

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#75

Post by ksherlock » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:52 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #35

pjmlp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that GNU is Not UNIX and many companies still have UNIX boxes without GNU on them.

Correct. And the last time I came across one of those I compiled and used modern tools. Because even 20 year old Linux versions had tab complete and a vi that worked with directional keys

I guess you don't AIX much.

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#76

Post by Gracana » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:56 PM UTC

ebbv wrote: post #54

I remember when this was new and I've never found it as amusing as other people seem to. It's super easy to shit on software that's almost 50 years old. But where's the replacement? Windows is still worse as a web server platform than various Unix descendants (Linux and BSD) despite Microsoft's best efforts, and it's not free. Unix has its flaws but being a "Unix hater" is just dumb.

UHH absolutely does not attack UNIX for being old. See "Who We Are" in the preface. The authors worked with systems they felt were superior in many ways, until industry/economic forces pushed them to UNIX.

"This book is about people who are in abusive relationships with UNIX, woven around the threads in the UNIX-HATERS mailing list."

They're not a bunch of angry outsiders, they're UNIX insiders who reject the idea of "Worse is Better." Worse is Worse, but we're stuck with it.

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#77

Post by problems » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:56 PM UTC

dsmithatx wrote: post #73

When I read this 20 years ago I would never have believed I'd be typing this on a Mac laptop running yet another Unix variant. This line is now so funny... As for me? I switched to the Mac. No more grep, no more piping, no more SED scripts. Just a simple, elegant life: “Your application has unexpectedly quit due to error number –1. OK?”

How does one use a Mac without grep or piping?

I bought a macbook thinking I'd learn how to use it... but after 3 years, all I can do on a Mac is open a web browser and terminal.

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#78

Post by jasonsync » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:58 PM UTC

falsedan wrote: post #61

gingerbread-man wrote: post #59

For all of the usability flaws pointed out here, to what would you ascribe Unix's proliferation and modern ubiquity? - Giving it away to universities? - The C programming language? What am I missing?

The common explanation is "worse is better" (see The Rise of Worse is Better [0]) [0]: http://dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html

tldr.

The lesson to be learned from this is that it is often undesirable to go for the right thing first. It is better to get half of the right thing available so that it spreads like a virus. Once people are hooked on it, take the time to improve it to 90% of the right thing.

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#79

Post by throwanem » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:59 PM UTC

mamon wrote: post #58

throwanem wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lisp machines turn up pretty frequently in this context, and I understand why - some of their capabilities still haven't been replicated anywhere else, nor are they likely to be, and that's a real loss; in particular, there is a great deal to be said for a model in which changing the behavior of the running system, right down to the microcode, can be as simple as writing up the changes you want and evaluating them. N…

Live modifications of OS code sounds like a recipe for disaster. Unless you are an expert that codes himself an OS before breakfast

It's not something one would probably use every day, or without due care. But it is something you can. And, as I said before, unless you take explicit steps to persist the change across boots, one flick of the big red switch and it's gone.

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#80

Post by Gracana » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 2:00 PM UTC

problems wrote: post #77

dsmithatx wrote: post #73

When I read this 20 years ago I would never have believed I'd be typing this on a Mac laptop running yet another Unix variant. This line is now so funny... As for me? I switched to the Mac. No more grep, no more piping, no more SED scripts. Just a simple, elegant life: “Your application has unexpectedly quit due to error number –1. OK?”

How does one use a Mac without grep or piping? I bought a macbook thinking I'd learn how to use it... but after 3 years, all I can do on a Mac is open a web browser and terminal.

This book was written long before Mac OS X.