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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...
Its architecture was more similar to modern web apps, with the UI running code and processing events on the client machine.
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Yeah but try and figure out how you'd do better... efficient.ly. Over the network...
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.
One day it'll win :) Actually I think we could do NEWS in JS. Somehow I don't feel that would make you happy tho :P
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They all are, but this book dates from a time when Unix had nothing like the absolute dominance of paradigm it does now. True, by the early-mid 90s, the Unix model had effectively won - but there remained a very large number of people with fond memories of other platforms, many of which did at least some things better than any contemporary or even modern Unix.
>there remained a very large number of people with fond memories of other platforms, many of which did at least some things better than any contemporary or even modern Unix. Yeah, that's what I'm curious about. Could you name names? :)
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.
While entertaining, I'm left with the following question: if not UNIX, then what? Are there any successful non-UNIX-y OSes that are worth checking out? I may embarrass myself here, but I was under the impression that BSD, Plan 9, Solaris and HP-UX were all UNIX-y ...
Basically only two paradigms survived the 90s. The Unix way (via Linux, BSD, Darwin) and the VMS way (via Windows NT). Everything else is either ultra-niche, dying, a mainframe so ancient and terrifying nobody will go near it, or only of marginal historical import. Bear in mind that when this book was written, the average desktop PC was running MS-DOS, and possibly Windows 3.1 if it was new and powerful enough. What…
In regards to IDEs, frameworks, programming languages culture.
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Yeah but try and figure out how you'd do better... efficient.ly. Over the network...
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.
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 ?
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Yeah but try and figure out how you'd do better... efficient.ly. Over the network...
Yes; the chapter actually made me admire the design.
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They all are, but this book dates from a time when Unix had nothing like the absolute dominance of paradigm it does now. True, by the early-mid 90s, the Unix model had effectively won - but there remained a very large number of people with fond memories of other platforms, many of which did at least some things better than any contemporary or even modern Unix.
>there remained a very large number of people with fond memories of other platforms, many of which did at least some things better than any contemporary or even modern Unix. Yeah, that's what I'm curious about. Could you name names? :)
It's interesting that no one blinks twice at the thought of using a decades-old operating system - it's "mature", "battle tested", "proven over time" or some other phrase. On the other hand, programming languages that are decades old are looked upon as antiquated and not fit for modern problems, so we create new languages and discard the old ones, including forgetting useful ideas those languages contained. Sometimes…
Unix is weird because it evolved organically and without a unified direction. But it remains because power and familiarity beat user experience. Yes, the "pure" Unix tools are awful, GNU improved on their usability a lot. But they're still a simple command that does something. Except Autotools. Those should burn in eternal damnation.