Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site dartvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!dartvax!alexc From: alexc@dartvax.UUCP (Alex Colvin) Newsgroups: net.cse Subject: CS students unexposed to C Message-ID: <2460@dartvax.UUCP> Date: Tue, 9-Oct-84 21:53:01 EDT Article-I.D.: dartvax.2460 Posted: Tue Oct 9 21:53:01 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 11-Oct-84 04:12:46 EDT Organization: Dartmouth College Lines: 43 Some remarks made here recently reflect an attitude that u--x & its clones are the universal operating systems, that everyone should have used. I have run into this attitude before. It bothers me. I expect that there are a lot of serious programmers, a few of whom may even be CS students, who have not been exposed to u--x. I expect some of them wouldn't care for it. Not only is it hope- lessly inadequate in some areas, but it is not intended as a general-purpose system. It succeeds at what it does by not at- tempting to solve everyone's problems. There are a number of decent operating systems out there that people use, including the null one. I would be suspicious of anyone who had ONLY u--x exposure. Such a one would be unexposed to APL, SNOBOL, ALGOL, etc. For that matter, to almost anything but C. U--x lacks implementations of many significant languages, and those that do exist are generally substandard. A phenomenon I noticed once is that most folks are using such aw- ful operating systems that they don't realize what they're miss- ing until they use u--x, after which they become dedicated UN*X- heads, seeing everything in u--x terms. It's very hard to tell someone like that that someone else does something better. They've seen perfection. This resembles the effect that APL and FORTH have on folks who are used to FORTRAN. I understand that even C sometimes has this effect, though I find that scarcely credible. U--x is a 15-year-old operating system. Has there been no pro- gress? Better that someone be conversant with a variety of operating systems, programming languages, and (natural) languages. Finally, as a former CS student, I advise you to take any degree with a little salt. After all, my alma mater (not here) doesn't even have a language requirement for the CS Ph.D. alexc@dartmouth alexc%dartmouth@csnet-relay ...dartvax!alexc Alex Colvin