James Giles wrote:

>   Back when UNIX was the
> *least* reliable and stable system for mainframes, minis, and
> high-end worstations it was promoted as being the de-facto
> standard that everyone had to switch to because all the
> Universities used it (they used it because, a decade before
> that, it was *free* - not because they thought it was any
> good).

> All those better systems are now in the waste tip, mainly
> because UNIX promoted compatibility as more important than any
> of those other attributes (even when it wasn't *really* all that widespread
> itself - the *claim* was made that it was the de-facto standard).
>

  It is not clear to me why the Smalltalk environment was not taken as an
standard,
given that it was the most easily portable language and the whole environment
was
written in Smalltalk.

If Smalltalk would have been free in the 80's, UNIX would have been in the waste
tip too.