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The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

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

#181

Post by jff »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #6
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.

Yeah but try and figure out how you'd do better... efficient.ly. Over the network...

Plan 9 did it in an interesting way. You draw to the screen by writing to files under /dev. On Plan 9, all file operations take place over 9P, a networked file protocol. So if you are connecting to a remote machine and want to run a graphical program, you mount your local /dev/draw files on the remote end (this is actually taken care of automatically by cpu(1)) and just run the program. Its graphical functions access your local machine's /dev/draw and it all Just Works. Hard to explain but very neat when you use it.

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

#182

Post by dahart »

problems wrote: post #119
pjmlp wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does one use a Mac without grep or piping? Using Finder, XCode, Objective-C and Swift frameworks,...

Bluh, don't get me started on Finder. Icons in directories would randomly be overlapping just because I hadn't been in them in a while and new files were added, they added this weird tagging system with colors that just doesn't make sense to me at all, it randomly thinks I want to view some sort of "recently used files and some random shit" list instead of my homedir. I don't know what the devs of it were thinking. E…

> Objective-C looks like a clusterfuck and I never want to touch it.

This is pretty much moot now, the Apple world is abandoning Obj-C, but AFAIK it's just old, not bad. Like, came out at the same time as C++ old, and has seen fewer changes to the language than C++ has. It's a compiled, C-like language, so yeah, hard to use and very easy to crash, just like C & C++.

Interested to hear your point of view on what makes it seem like a cluster, if you want to share. (And I'm only interested in hearing and understanding your opinion, not on debating or contradicting your experience.)

Obj-C had a pretty cool calling mechanism underneath, known as "message passing" -- more or less the analogy to C++'s virtual member functions. But it is the only compiled language I know where you can actually call functions by name, like construct a string dynamically and call, and you get those dynamic calls at the same speed as compiled code (minus a fast function lookup you can usually do once).

I used that mechanism in some games to build a nice state machine class for actor behavior. I did the same in C++, and the Objective-C code was way nicer & easier to use.

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

#183

Post by jff »

omginternets wrote: post #114
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…

Very interesting, thanks. Why do you suppose Lisp-M isn't more widely used?

Lisp machines were expensive, the early ones at least took a very long time to boot, and I think there are weaknesses to the Lisp "image"/"world"/whatever model that Lisp-M partisans aren't quite willing to acknowledge. They're still extraordinarily cool machines.

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

#184

Post by DonHopkins »

arethuza wrote: post #71
reacweb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's correct!

It's no coincidence that NeWS and Java were both designed and written by James Gosling.

It could be said that Java rose out of the ashes of NeWS.

Although I wouldn't go as far as to say that NeWS rose out of the ashes of Gosling/UniPress/EvilSoftwareHoarder Emacs and Mocklisp. But Gnu Emacs did! ;)

However, at UniPress we did develop a nice NeWS display driver for Emacs that worked efficiently over a slow network connection, providing local interactivity like text selection feedback, control panels, pie menus, multiple tabbed windows, etc.

Here's the PostScript source code of the UniPress Emacs 2.20 NeWS display driver [1], and a screen snapshot [2] of Emacs as an authoring tool for the NeWS version of the HyperTIES hypermedia system (plus a diagram of HyperTIES extensible client/server architecture).

[1] http://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/emacs/emacs.ps.txt

[2] http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/101

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

#185

Post by pjmlp »

jff wrote: post #180
pjmlp wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Mount $HOME as noexec - Disable execution bit for all directories for home - If the UNIX variant allows it, jail/contain home for each user session - Punish users or their employer if a consulting firm severely that bypass IT regulations

- If Linux, find the current local privilege escalation bug, get root, and burn it all to the ground.

Followed by get fired and charged.

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

#187

Post by dahart »

problems wrote: post #119
pjmlp wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does one use a Mac without grep or piping? Using Finder, XCode, Objective-C and Swift frameworks,...

Bluh, don't get me started on Finder. Icons in directories would randomly be overlapping just because I hadn't been in them in a while and new files were added, they added this weird tagging system with colors that just doesn't make sense to me at all, it randomly thinks I want to view some sort of "recently used files and some random shit" list instead of my homedir. I don't know what the devs of it were thinking. E…

The finder is a wart. Apple does have a lot of good UI elsewhere, but the finder needs an overhaul so bad it hurts.

Know what drives me the most nuts? That there's a single default key (Enter) to rename a folder, while you have to use a key chord (Command-O) to enter a folder. It's so backwards, renaming is not something I spend even remotely as much time doing as moving around. That's not to mention the so completely obvious missed opportunity to let the Enter key do what it says and Enter the folder.

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

#188

Post by mcguire »

pjmlp wrote: post #164
mcguire wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can install stuff in your home directory. No access rights needed. Look up the --prefix argument. This isn't windows, after all.

You are assuming that: 1 - You can put them there; 2 - You have enough quota; 3- $HOME isn't mounted as noexec; 4 - IT don't have scripts that purge $HOME from executables, which the corresponding penalties for the respective user when found. I am not a UNIX newbie, although I favor Windows.

Hey, the constraint was not having privileges, not being hounded by death-crazed, fire-breathing, Fascist IT goobs out to prevent all work.

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

#189

Post by mcguire »

pvg wrote: post #177
mcguire wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As humor, it's like Tesla's appearance on Top Gear: kind of funny until the 57th time you have to explain to someone why it's wrong.

So you're saying these people don't know what 'client', 'server' and 'networking' mean and they should have stopped trying to be funny at 'Annals of Unix Hating, Vol. 56'. Tough crowd.

Yes. Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying.

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

#190

Post by throwanem »

jff wrote: post #183
omginternets wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting, thanks. Why do you suppose Lisp-M isn't more widely used?

Lisp machines were expensive, the early ones at least took a very long time to boot, and I think there are weaknesses to the Lisp "image"/"world"/whatever model that Lisp-M partisans aren't quite willing to acknowledge. They're still extraordinarily cool machines.

> there are weaknesses to the Lisp "image"/"world"/whatever model that Lisp-M partisans aren't quite willing to acknowledge

I'd be interested to hear this expanded upon.

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