Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
Subject: Re: Open Letter: Don't get rid of UNIX
From: scott@nic.gac.edu (Scott Hess)
Date: 4 Sep 92 23:05:59
Organization: Gustavus Adolphus College
In-reply-to: songer@lexmark.com's message of 4 Sep 92 20:40:19 GMTLines: 67

In article <1992Sep04.204019.104785@lexmark.com>,
	songer@lexmark.com (Christopher Songer) writes:
>    NT is a clean slate. UNIX has the baggage of it's past to carry along.
>UNIX has alot of good ideas and NT has taken many of them. Never-the-less
>since NT is new, it can both solve the problems of UNIX incompatibilties
>and it can throw out the old UNIX baggage.
>
>    For example, UNIX command line options are a nightmare. There is absolutely
>no consistency, yet no one wants to change it for "historical" reasons. (ie
>for backward compatibility reasons.) It carries the baggage of it's history
>and can never be rid of it.

Yes, but all of the proven Unix utilities will have the same
options under other operating systems - due to "historical
reasons".  If we wait until the a OS has accrued it's own response
to each of the useful Unix things, then it, too, will have it's
own response to "historical reasons".  Microsoft has proven in the
past that it doesn't take much more than a year to build a pretty
substantial albotross around one's neck ... for instance, do you
think they are just going to ignore all that they've put into
original Windows?

>    It also carries old, out dated utilities. Consider cu, and tip.
>Both accomplish basically the same purpose, yet both must be retained
>in the OS.

howard:Stuart/Stuart2.4x> ls -i /usr/bin/tip /usr/bin/cu
 76256 /usr/bin/cu*    76256 /usr/bin/tip*

And amazingly enough, they are also the same program.

>    Finally, NT need not suffer from diverging enchancements. Consider
>threads. These were not included in the early UNIX and hence various
>camps have arrived at different solutions to the same problem. Solutions
>from Sun's light weight processes to NeXT's use of cthreads all provide
>basically the same functionality with different interface. NT threads will
>be NT threads without the various implementations.

What's the point of your argument?  NeXTSTEP doesn't suffer from
diverging enhancements, either.  The only reason NT won't so suffer
is because there will be a single NT.  NT solves the problem by
fiat - Microsoft says what threads will be, and that's how threads
are.

Personally, I've found in the pasts that Microsoft's operating
systems have had _more_ diverging enhancements than Unix does.
Unix has more functionality, and thus has fewer areas that require
the vendor to write their own solution to the problem.



Disclaimer:  Personally, I have _no_ interest in the NeXT becoming
a mass market machine.  I don't want it to fail - I just don't
really care.  By the time NeXT becomes a mass market machine, I
fully plan to have jumped ship to whatever platform is neat at that
time.  The computer market has proven time and time again that
"neat and innovative" do not mix well (at all?) with "mass market".
I have no interest in working on a platform that caters to the
needs of all users - because, by definition, that platform won't
be all that interesting.  I'd rather work on something a little
bit racey ...

Later,
--
scott hess <shess@ssesco.com>  <Who achieved programmer nirvana on Aug 11th>
12901 Upton Avenue South, #326  Burnsville, MN 55337 (612) 895-1208 Anytime!
   <Text: One Class to bring them all and in the darkness bind them ...>