From: minas@cs.yorku.ca (Minas Spetsakis)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: RE: IS UNIX DEAD
Date: 22 Nov 92 01:10:34 GMT
Article-I.D.: yetti.1565
Distribution: world
Organization: York University, Dept. of Comp. Sci. - Toronto

In article <98246@netnews.upenn.edu>, ioi@pixmap.seas.upenn.edu (Ioi Kim Lam) writes:

|> 	Of course, I agree that the current GUI technology has its
|> downsides. It is still in its infancy. I think what we should do is trying
|> to improve it, not clinging to the old methods. 
|> 
|> 	I believe what the programmer should do is to deliver the power of
|> the computer to every user, regardless to their knowledge in computing.
|> How good is a powerful application that no one can use?
|> 
|> 	Let us look at the impossibility. Our ancestors have conquered
|> many impossibilities. They may laugh at us if we now say "it is just

There are applications that are targeted for professionals and applications that
are targeted for laymen. We all use refrigerator, oven, range but I don't think
any of us has a professional restaurant size oven or range. At least among the
readers of this group. This does not mean that professional refrigerators will
disappear. Nor that I change my chevette with an 18-wheeler because this is what
pro's use.

The same applies for application software. Whoever has difficulty learning
the keystrokes of emacs, would do society a favour if he did not program! He would
be better off buying the software and insist on a user friendly one.

Even people that use a PC or a mac for programming and application development
do rely on non user friendly software. May be they are able to take more often
advantage of goodies that were developed for non computer profesionals. But they
pay the price of having to worry about the size of memory, lack of true
timesharing, primitive networking etc etc. In other words PCs are not as user
friendly to someone that does heavy programming on them.

If I want an editor that I am going to stick with the rest of my life
and I want it to be extensible like crazy, allow me to send and receive mail while
I am editing a program and previewing a paper I am editing in another buffer
then I am not going to find a user friendly one! I am stuck with emacs. And after
using emacs since 84 I can work much faster than anybody that has to move his
lunchbag to find the mouse. I use X11 but still I open emacs with the no window
option, to avoid the mouse (I might spill my soup).

Part of the reason may be that I know emacs very well and I don't need to learn
how to juggle a mouse. But the main reason is that I prefer to work on a system
that whenever a feature is missing I can add it in minutes rather than on a
system that I depend on someone else to program these features for me because he
sensed that I am a good market. Unix was designed by programmers for programmers.

And do not expect unix to switch to user friendlyness soon. First the main users
do not care much. Second we are stuck with X. Have you ever seen the code for X.
Just the size of it defies any logic. It is the height of code re-usability:
it is imposible to write a descent program for it; the best you can hope is to
modify an example from O'Reilly books. At least that's what I do.

What I am trying to say is that unix is going to live and prosper. If it ever becomes user friendly is because it expanded in the non programmer world. A
programer needs the windows (sunview, X, OpenWhatever etc) only to logon to more
machines, do fancier graphics... increase his productivity in general.



Minas E. Spetsakis