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From: gjk@talcott.UUCP (Greg Kuperberg)
Newsgroups: net.works,net.flame
Subject: Re: Re: grisly grizzled programs (actually: comments on ls bugs)
Message-ID: <321@talcott.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 4-Mar-85 09:54:58 EST
Article-I.D.: talcott.321
Posted: Mon Mar  4 09:54:58 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 7-Mar-85 05:29:00 EST
References: <596@topaz.ARPA> <372@terak.UUCP> <3284@umcp-cs.UUCP> <6322@boring.UUCP>
Organization: Harvard
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Xref: watmath net.works:941 net.flame:8698

> This is a clear specimen of the attitude which makes Unix still look so much
> like what it originally was: a programmers' toy.
...
> This may be acceptable in a system that's mostly used by experts who wrote
> it themselves and "just want their job done", it's not in Unix as it is
> currently used: a user-friendly time-sharing system, or a powerful personal
> computer's OS.  It is more than time that the programmers realize this and
> start writing programs that can stand whatever the users do with them --
> the program should either perform well or produce an understandable
> diagnostic.
...
> 	Guido van Rossum, "Stamp Out BASIC" Committee, CWI, Amsterdam
> 	guido@mcvax.UUCP

It is still a programmers toy, because it is still written in C.  Because
of this, it also whatever you want it to be:  user-friendly, user-
unfriendly, personal, time-sharing, a network system, a games system,
a research system, compatible, utterly incompatible, and so on.  This is the
power of Unix.

Actually, in order to put it on the personal computers, you usually need to
optimize to assembly language, at which point it loses all its magic.
---
			Greg Kuperberg
		     harvard!talcott!gjk

"2*x^5-10*x+5=0 is not solvable by radicals." -Evariste Galois.