Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 23:28:41 -0400 (EDT) From: James <dominus@minos.dyn.ml.org> To: ML Duke <mlduke@concentric.net> Cc: jdn@acp.qiv.com, freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: A first encounter with 'vi' Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980617224306.501A-100000@localhost> In-Reply-To: <358873B2.1858@concentric.net>
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This message says alot and I agree whole heartedly with it all. On Wed, 17 Jun 1998, ML Duke wrote: > Kerby Smith wrote: > > > > heh, i was just kinda in awe of this conversation > > Likewise. Which has inspired some thoughts. The vi discussion goes > to the very root of Unix itself. Unix exists in objective reality. > It doesn't give a hoot what people "feel" about it. If things are > set up correctly it operates perfectly. A single misplaced text > character can cause serious malfunction. Unix operates on the premis > of absolutes: You do this right (user) and I will do this in very > little time (Unix) or at the very least allow you to do other things > while I carry on. We do it wrong, Unix tells us to go fly. > > Unix is a philosophy: Small is beautiful. Small programs, written by > very strong minds, working together to accomplish many things in > extraordinarily short periods of time. More strong minds discovering > new and better ways to integrate the programs, introduce new ones. sed, awk, cat, grep, cut 5 commands I am a firm believer that with those 4 commands and enough | and > characters you can accomplish 90% of the text processing problems. Then to top it off put a ' | mail myaddress@myemail.com' on the end and get the results in your mailbox. That is true power. Newbie challenge: Using ifconfig, grep, and cut give one UNIX command that shows an IP address on a network interface. I did that when I first started because I wanted a way to e-mail my IP address to myself when my dialer connected and I was not at home. It was a feeling to get it to work and it is not that difficult. Plus, you get a feeling for what simple tools placed together in a sensible fashion can do for you with relative ease. > But many people, if not most these days, object very strongly to > the idea of an objective reality that does not care what we as humans > think about it. They actually believe the reality around them changes > depending upon what they feel about it. Which is why, I think, Unix is, > in a very basic way, hated. Unix _is_ the internet, for example, > but few know it and most think its winfeces. Many faced with the facts > refuse to accept them--like those who believed in "acid rain" and still > believe in the "ozone theory". When my file processing class, sophomore level Computer science, was told that the course was going to be taught on AIX machines alot of people paniced. There was a sense of rest because my school had just stopped teaching 370 mainframe assembly and people were glad to be off 'arcane' hardware. All semester people made "UNIX is not used in the real world" statements. All the while I laughed ;). Then, then time rolled around for co-op's and most places this time around just happened to want UNIX experience. That was fun to watch > And win operates in objevtive reality itself, it just doesn't let > the user know about it: This is why it locks up, refuses to boot, > smashes other programs and requires users to reinstall it on a > routine basis. It tries to be all things to all people who do not > wish to think much. And no computer can do that. I think part of this attitude is that people don't know anything different. This pushes the myth that all computers are unreliable. How many times have you gone to a store and heard, "Oh the system is down today." How many home PC, average window's 95 users who bought their computer at Sears, Office Max, or the like know ANYTHING else? I bet that number is high. Partly because of fear to experiment. They fear any little thing can break the plastic and metal box they just bought. This is understood beacuse they are new and there are all the stories of Bob who's computer caught a virus, and Frank who's hard drive crashed and he lost everything. This causes them to just stick with windows. They don't realize the performance gains that can be made by using another OS. I am not a strong windows advocate. It has its highs and lows, and I think as a development environment or in a network environment where you need a robust and high performance system, UNIX wins hands down. However, like it or not, windows DOES have one thing over UNIX. That is the interface. How hard is it to learn when you turn the thing on and you see a little yellow arrow moving across the bottom of the screen saying click here to start? I know all the arguments about KDE, CDE, FVWM95, and such but how many machines have you seen preloaded with those? How many people ask questions about setting them up? What about just X alone? Then how many people have problems with PPP user or god forbid kernel mode. Then you have to think about PAP and CHAP vs. plaintext passwords. Modem init strings? god forbid we use those they came from DOS. Windows takes all that away and replaces it with a fill in the blank puzzle. Compare setting up a windows printer to configuring lpd, if I could click a printer name and a port and have any file I want print properly, I would certainly be happier when it came to be lpd time. (THANK God for APSFilter, which almost make it that easy). These are the issues that should be addressed before something like BSD or Linux appears in a common household. We can only overcome the problem of low expectations from software, and hence low quality-high price commercial software, when people realize that there better things and without a "point-and-click" interface I doubt that will ever be achieved. The true challenge comes in creating the interface, but maintaining the ability to get the power we do now out of it without going to extra pains and avoiding system bloat. I know this is probably a poorly structured post, forgive it, but I think you can probably get my points. 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