From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,df854b5838c3e14 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "Dr.Dmitry A.Kazakov" Subject: Re: Unix Haters Date: 1996/03/29 Message-ID: X-Deja-AN: 144845316 x-mail2news-path: relay-4.mail.demon.net!post.demon.co.uk![193.175.120.241] x-nntp-posting-host: [193.175.120.241] x-sender: dmitry@gandalf content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-03-29T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: ian@rsd.bel.alcatel.be (Ian Ward) wrote: >James McIninch writes > > >> you write for those, not because they're powerful, efficient, easy to work >> with, etc., but because people will buy your stuff. If you write large-scale >> projects for mission-critical applications in networked environments, chances >> are pretty good you'll work with UNIX, which has the greatest market share >> for that sort of thing. > >That is more to do with the fact that mostly graduates work in >those areas. The were weaned on Unix which was really cheap for >their college to buy (or free,) and they did not want to use >anything else when they left, twenty years on, and the graduates >now order equipment and stock. > >I see a lot of the people who these days saying VMS is crap and >difficult to use, but a lot (not all) have not even used it, and >some of those that have not ventured past DCL. > >These two operating systems, to me, define the differences between >something that had to be sold, and something that was never >originally designed to be. I am not taking away from the unix team >there are as many clever, nifty, things in Unix, as there are in >the Fiat 500. I am also not saying I cannot use it successfully >either, I have tolerated it now for a few years. > >What I am saying is that : > >1. Its not reliable, no operating system worth its salt could >have a list of bugs in its manual tables without making serious >attempts to fix them in future releases. This can not now be done >because of the huge numbers of people who have worked on it over >the years, there are reams of software that depend on the bugs. >It is like a bad golfer aiming right to correct a slice, >rather than addressing the root problem. Yes. I worked under VMS on a machine with a hard drive that stopped several times per day. When I fired it up, nobody lost his edit session. This is far beyond of reach of any UNIX. >2. It is not efficient. Ok, so loads of people are bound to argue >with this one. You'll say, as I have heard hundreds of times before >that you can solve any problem in ten different ways. This, in my >eyes is not efficiency, because it simply means that nine out of the >ten solutions are not as efficient as they could be. I agree. >3. Its utilities are not intuitive either, grep, as was quoted >in an earlier article as being a good unix utility, cost me a >weeks work last year, when it could not find simple strings in >a catenation (admittedly massive) series of files. As for tar, >well, the most hilarious thing is that people who use it daily >think it is quite good. Again yes. >4. One sees few books on comparative strengths and weaknesses >of say, MSDOS and VMS, but there are acres of unix books in >existence comparing unix to MSDOS. What does this say about >its power? Nothing, because neither MS-DOS nor Windows is an operating system. >5. It only supports one language, (really.) Today things look better (gcc+gnat). Although it cannot be compared with VMS (LSE editor and debugger for all languages, sigh). >6. It is cheap, which is why it succeeded, and it is so simple >(requires so little support) that it will run on anything. >Though I wish it truly supported VMS's asynchronous system traps >in all their power, (and messaging, and command definition) >but it doesn't. Yes, but "requires little support"? Every day I must something configure. And these thousands of configuration files that migrate from one directory to another when a new OS version come ... >7. It is cheap, like a cheap whore, but I can cope with that, >and as an engineer, I find some of the things it does quite >clever, but I would rather work with an heavily engineered >operating system that has cost money to develop, and works, >than one which no matter how clever it is, and it is clever, >always leaves you with the feeling that the highly stressed >nature of its solutions are just about ready to crack. The main pain is that the question is not "Unix or VMS (or better a new modern OS)", but "Unix" or "MS-Windows (2000)". And it seems to me that "MS-Windows" will win! That will be the end of the world. (:-() Regards, Dmitry