From: sfkaplan@unix.amherst.edu (Scott Kaplan)
Subject: Re: IS UNIX DEAD?
Organization: Amherst College
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 01:21:16 GMT

Okay, I am going to have to agree that we're all getting a little off track
from the subject many of us seem to vehiment about.  We're comparing DOS (some-
thing few of us really want to defend) to UNIX, and that's not really the
point.  The big question is, will UNIX going bye-bye because it isn't marketed
well (or at all)?  Or is UNIX not a part of the race that OS/2, Windows NT, and
the Mac OS (for examples) are in?

Peter Busser seems insistant in his response that UNIX has the ability to be
all things to all people, if only programmers would make it as such.  Then all
the UNIX world has to do is make it commercially feasible.

Now, I think that could be done, but I also think it wouldn't be the best idea
for either group (the groups being the average users and the programmer/hackers
in the world)...and I'll tell you why as best I can.

I said last time that it would be a waste of UNIX to make it look nice and
easy to use and keep track of your grocery list for Joe User.  There are other
OS's that are designed for that kind of use (most notably the Mac OS) and
those OS's are getting better all the time.  Now, Peter, I think correctly,
projected that eventually then, those OS's would just be better than UNIX
because the UNIX people have chosen to ignore such avenues.  I will be more
clear this time and hopefully provide a good answer to that.  I'm not saying
that UNIX is perfect as-is and shouldn't be touched.  UNIX *should* advance,
and it will as long as programmers keep using it as they do right now.  The
difference is, it will become more powerful and more flexible, but the goal
does not need to be ease of use.  The crowd that uses UNIX now will continue
to do so, because they will make it more powerful and push its flexibility.
That crowd is not especially concerned with ease of use.  The other OS will
get stronger, but they will continue to lack the flexibility and power to the
programmer that UNIX provides.  So both types of OS's will continue to grow
in different directions.  There's little wrong with that.

The reason UNIX is as old as it is, but is still used on the most powerful and
advanced machines around, is because it is so given to change.  Making a change
with the GUI's and easy-to-use OS's becomes a major task, because the end user
that gets these changes don't want *anything* changed.  They want their machine
to do its task, no hassles.  Pushing such an OS into the future is tough.  If
you stretch UNIX into that kind of market, the programmers and UNIX-fiddlers
will find it very difficult to keep changing what used to be their very-
maliable (sp?) OS.  If you make UNIX something that programmers don't want to
use, THEN it will die, because nobody else will want to push it forward.

A lot of people here seem to hold some disdain for the user that wants to "just
get his task done".  I think that's a mistake...It's not that knowing about
computers is bad, but the less they *need* to know, the more useful a tool it
becomes to them.  Computers are becoming very diverse, and now that the
consumer market has made it clear that they want to do their job and not worry
about what's under the hood, there will be plenty of effort put into nice,
easily utilized GUIs and such.  Don't try to take something that was meant
for mostly fiddling under the hood and try to turn it into a Joe Average
product, because that will turn programmers off...they'll go to something
else (or make it if they have to) if they no longer have such a powerful
environment, and UNIX will be up a creek.

I don't like the car analogy that much, but I think it'll make a good point.
Way back, someone said that driving cars was tough long ago (double clutches,
manual everything, etc), and so the resposive auto-industry created automatic
transmission.  Excellent.  For Joe Average getting from here to there, he's got
what he needs.  But, because automatic works so well for Joe Average, should
we put it into professional race cars?  I bet the driving pro's would be very
upset.

Oh, and as much fun as we all like to make of MS-DOS, Mac OS, Windows...I do
some tasks, some of them very simple, some of them moderately demanding, on
such machines.  They're capable of some tough tasks...So let's not make them
sound like their for simpletons only.  I would just cringe to think, though,
what kind of mess my Mac interface would be if it contained the power of UNIX.
Pull down menus that go on forever both down and accross, and some terrible
way of mixing mouse selections to simulate what the UNIX command line does with
pipes and such.  Bleah.

Both kinds of OS can be better, and maybe something better will be developed...
but strictly speaking, UNIX as the EveryThingOS doesn't seem such a wonderful
idea.

Scott Kaplan
Amherst College
sfkaplan@cs.amherst.edu

P.S. C'mon, let's all be civil here.  No need for insults and mud slinging.  It
only inteferes in getting your point accross.