I was shown the following today :
http://starlink.jach.hawaii.edu/bulletins/n13padman.pdf
I have to give it some leniency baring in mind when it was written, I was probably still hacking and cracking Amigas and STs with no real interest in astronomy software.
It’s a standard user rant that can be heard today, not about UNIX, well apart from noone really runs UNIX any more, do they ? but you move anyone from the system they are accustomed to using and make them use another one that is different in it’s user’s expectations, and you will hear the same tone, choice of words.
OK, in a round about way, I was trying to say the stance is “I don’t understand something, therefore it’s wrong !!” It’s a compelling argument.
Actually, in a very real sense, it is, but I digress.
I cannot think of anyone who could argue today with the contents from that document for VMS over any *NIX. It has to be said that UNIX was a very different beast when that was written, but my point remains.
I could pick it apart and point out simple things like …
But why oh why invent a system where the commands MV, mv, Mv and mV can all do different things?
… and …
“ctrl/D ‘End of File’: Used to terminate data or text entry from the keyboard. If you use it when being prompted for a command it will log you out”
…. have essentially the same cause.
I could, but that would be petty … and pointless.
Out of interest, UNIX’s creators would go on to detest certain aspects of the operating system, and went on to write Plan9, but by then it was too late. Similarly, there were many things carried over from NeXT into Darwin that are still really good ideas, but are ignored by most developers coming from other *NIX operating systems, as it requires some understanding and Apple don’t prevent you from doing it other ways. Still maybe Apple will have the last laugh on that one.
Anyway, I’ll leave you with the words most appropriate for summing this whole business up, in the words of Dennis Ritchie from the forward to The UNIX Hater’s Handbook ….
From: dmr@plan9.research.att.com
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 00:38:07 EST
Subject: anti-forewordTo 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 memories. 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, they are intoxicated by metaphor. In the Preface you suffer first from heat, lice, and malnourishment, then become prisoners in a Gulag. In Chapter 1 you are in turn infected by a virus, racked by drug addiction, and addled by puffiness of the genome.
Yet your prison without coherent design continues to imprison you. How can this be, if it has no strong places? The rational prisoner exploits the weak places, creates order from chaos: instead, collectives like the FSF vindicate their jailers by building cells almost compatible with the existing ones, albeit with more features. The journalist with three undergraduate degrees from MIT, the researcher at Microsoft, and the senior scientist at Apple might volunteer a few words about the regulations of the prisons to which they have been transferred.
Your sense of the possible is in no sense pure: sometimes you want the same thing you have, but wish you had done it yourselves; other times you want something different, but can’t seem to get people to use it; sometimes one wonders why you just don’t shut up and tell people to buy a PC with Windows or a Mac. No Gulag or lice, just a future whose intellectual tone and interaction style is set by Sonic the Hedgehog. You claim to seek progress, but you succeed mainly in whining.
Here is my metaphor: your book is a pudding stuffed with apposite observations, many well-conceived. Like excrement, it contains enough undigested nuggets of nutrition to sustain life for some. But it is not a tasty pie: it reeks too much of contempt and of envy.
Bon appetit!