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Tue, 15 Mar 1994 00:38:07 EST Subject: anti-foreword To the contributers to this book: I have succumbed to the temptation you offered in your preface: I do write you off as envious malcontents and romantic keepers of memo- ries. The systems you remember so fondly (TOPS-20, ITS, Multics, Lisp Machine, Cedar/Mesa, the Dorado) are not just out to pasture, they are fertilizing it from below. Your judgments are not keen,…
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Yes, using standard POSIX tools wasn't the best experience of the world. What helped Unix succeed was that originally Bell Labs wasn't allowed to sell it, so they gave it to universities for what was a symbolic price in comparisasion what a standard OS used to cost, alongside its source code. So naturally many stundents from those universities went out and started businesses based on UNIX, like Sun for example. One o…
Eh, what? At the time (1994) the handbook was written reasonably priced alternatives were MacOS and Windows, both of which froze all the time and had horrible programming environments. AIX, non-free, was notoriously horrible, too. And the Wirth systems that you promote here were actually free. So what exactly is the great stable commercial alternative in the 90s?
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Linux is only free if your time is worthless. ;)
Windows 10 Pro is only $200.00 if your time is worthless, is the flip side.
I founded the mailing list the book was based on. These days I say, Unix went from being the worst operating system available, to being the best operating system available, without getting appreciably better. (which may not be entirely accurate, but don't flame me). And still miss my Lisp Machine. It's not that Unix is really that bad, it's that it has a certain model of computer use which has crowded out the more am…
It's probably been a long while since you've gone back to it, but The "Worse is Better" chapter in this book seems to show rather amazing foresight; it basically predicts the situation you describe regarding Unix being "the best operating system available without getting appreciably better" and offers compelling reasons why that was likely. 25 years ago. Who the hell does that?
I heartily recommend his other writings. In fact, he considers "Worse is Better" some of the worst of his writings, and it is the most successful. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Just one that I've gotten a lot of mileage out of is "Habitability and Piecemeal Growth" in Patterns of Software. Lots of other gems in there: Reuse vs. Compression, The Quality Without a Name, etc.
EDIT: Forgot the link
I founded the mailing list the book was based on. These days I say, Unix went from being the worst operating system available, to being the best operating system available, without getting appreciably better. (which may not be entirely accurate, but don't flame me). And still miss my Lisp Machine. It's not that Unix is really that bad, it's that it has a certain model of computer use which has crowded out the more am…
When I discovered Linux and FreeBSD as a 15 year old, I was absolutely amazed by what I saw, coming from the world of Windows with some elementary school memories of the classic Mac OS sprinkled in. My exploring these *nix variants and learning about their development and history led to my decision to major in computer science and pursue a career in systems software research. I still have a high level of respect for…
And there were mechanisms for an OpenDoc-like system of embedded content (maybe more like OLE). While the rough idea of OpenDoc was and is appealing, I don't think that version of the idea is actually tenable.
Alas, since it was killed, it sort of lives on and occupies that space as an ideal version of the rough idea, rather than as an artefact that can be criticised and improved upon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, using standard POSIX tools wasn't the best experience of the world. What helped Unix succeed was that originally Bell Labs wasn't allowed to sell it, so they gave it to universities for what was a symbolic price in comparisasion what a standard OS used to cost, alongside its source code. So naturally many stundents from those universities went out and started businesses based on UNIX, like Sun for example. One o…
Eh, what? At the time (1994) the handbook was written reasonably priced alternatives were MacOS and Windows, both of which froze all the time and had horrible programming environments. AIX, non-free, was notoriously horrible, too. And the Wirth systems that you promote here were actually free. So what exactly is the great stable commercial alternative in the 90s?
OS/2 was pretty solid...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, using standard POSIX tools wasn't the best experience of the world. What helped Unix succeed was that originally Bell Labs wasn't allowed to sell it, so they gave it to universities for what was a symbolic price in comparisasion what a standard OS used to cost, alongside its source code. So naturally many stundents from those universities went out and started businesses based on UNIX, like Sun for example. One o…
Eh, what? At the time (1994) the handbook was written reasonably priced alternatives were MacOS and Windows, both of which froze all the time and had horrible programming environments. AIX, non-free, was notoriously horrible, too. And the Wirth systems that you promote here were actually free. So what exactly is the great stable commercial alternative in the 90s?
In the mainframe world, TOPS-10/20 and VMS were both exemplary. From the user POV, the former was one of the best command-line systems ever created, with none of the insane user-hostility built into UNIX command naming. Dave "VMS -> NT" Cutler absolutely hated Unix, and it shows.
But we're really comparing cinder blocks and potatoes. UNIX was designed as a hobby/student hacker tool, not as a general user OS. Many of the design choices are bizarre and frankly stupid, as the book delights in pointing out. But hackers love UNIX because using it just it feels just like hacking code, and that's considered a good thing.
It wouldn't be impossible to design an OS with powerful command line options but a sensible command naming system, much more intelligent and reliable security, a modern filesystem, and so on - and perhaps add some of the user configurability and extendability of the Lisp/Smalltalk/Hypercard(?) world.
But UNIX is so embedded now it would be a purely academic exercise.
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>particularly young CS students >C is not the gospel >Worshipers of Bell Labs I think you're one or two generations late, you'd have to be a hipster to be a CS student worshiping C and Bell Labs these days. I suspect most CS students these days start around web technologies using VS Code in stock Ubuntu, not hacking C programs using Emacs running in dwm on a heavily customized Slackware. I do agree that cat-v and the…
> I suspect most CS students these days start around web technologies using VS Code in stock Ubuntu More likely, Visual Studio Code on macOS.
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Windows 10 Pro is only $200.00 if your time is worthless, is the flip side.
If your time is worthless, Windows can - and always could - be free. But if your time is worth something, it's better to shell out that $$$, and also be legally and morally on the safe side.