Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 19:58:22 -0600 (CST) From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: Roelof Osinga <roelof@nisser.com> Cc: "Albert D. Cahalan" <acahalan@cs.uml.edu>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: OT: non-Unix history (Was: FreeBSD vs linux) Message-ID: <14968.49854.189652.128754@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <3A78BA39.8A14F8F@nisser.com> References: <14957.31196.939559.889627@guru.mired.org> <3A6F43F7.E43C6CA0@nisser.com> <14959.23870.728403.859934@guru.mired.org> <3A78BA39.8A14F8F@nisser.com>
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Roelof Osinga <roelof@nisser.com> types: > Mike Meyer wrote: I've moved this to -chat, as it's off topic for -questions. > > There are *lots* of potential reasons, many of them good ones. The > > issue about machine speed shows up in the infamous "Worse is better" > > paper, and I talk about this particular case in my "Good enough is > > best" paper <URL: http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/good-enough.html > > > (which provides pointers to "Worse is better" as well as covering the > > salient features). > I've started glimpsing part of that, or rather a reference in that > paper (The Rise of ``Worse is Better'') and I must say that what is > said in that is more or less ancient history. By which I mean > predating by far that article. Well, the "Good news, bad news" paper that "Worse is better" is part of dates back to '93, so in a sense, it is ancient history. > It is commonly known as > > Keep > It > Simple, > Stupid! > > or KISS for short. Something I, like any engineer, fully subscribe. > Maybe one of these days I'll read it fully. Until then I would like > to remark that introducing new terminology is in direct conflict > with the premise of KISS. New Jersey approach? Sheesh! I would suggest you read the full thing before commenting on it. Both approaches described in Gabriel paper are KISS approaches. I don't know of any names to describe them, other than the ones used there. At least one of those - Do The Right Thing - is in common use, but I'm not sure if that's where it originated. > It's a village type clash. Like the whole looser-ing problem. To me > it depends one the drawing of the system boundary. At what are you > looking? The whole solution or just one aspect? The difference between > wanting the procedure perfect versus the program perfect. The latter > does not necessarily depend on the former. Exactly - what are you looking at? Remeber, an OS - or a programming language - may be a product, but it's not a solution. It's a tool for building solutions. The approach for DTRT is keep the process of creating solutions simple (KISS). The approach for "Worse is better" is to keeps building the tool simple (KISS). > I don't quite agree with heaping CL and scheme together. Scheme is > more aking to LISP than CL. Originally anyway. Like comparing C++ > as CL with C as Scheme which were surprisingly used interchangingly. I'm not sure what you think they meant by CL, but they actually meant Common Lisp. Both CL and Scheme came from the LISP community, and had a LISP-like syntax on an Algol-like structure. > It's also too simplistic. On purpose. Read the paper. > One twist I observed in my hastily glimpsing of your piece is that > you seem to skip over the fact that what 'worse is better' is saying, > namely that KISS will win the battle, is precisely that. Meaning to > ultimately got 'something' into the most hands. Does refrasing > constitute a caricature? Well, of course worse is better says that KISS will win the battle - both methodologies are KISS methodologies. > Then again, as someone who tries to adhere to KISS I'm biased. To > me they both say more or less the same thing. The differences being > so minor a detail as to mean that bothering about those conflicts > with the whole idea of KISS ;). They only say the same thing if you never use tools you didn't create yourself. > > ... > > to port it to each variant. Since VMS - and later NT - were usually a > > larger market than any single Unix vendor, even if it wasn't as big as > > all of them put together, it got preference. > Which, of course, is why MVS or even OS/400 still rule the day. No? > Doesn't work that way, I'm afraid. Also, define 'usually'. Are we > talking early '93 'usually' or early '00 'usually'-ness? I'm asking > because in '93 UNIX ruled whereas in '00 UNIX still ruled but the > trade rags said 't was NT that ruled <g>. In '93, there were more VMS systems around than any single Unix platform. Sure, there may have been more Unix systems, but you couldn't write a "Unix version" of a competitive product and sell that, you had to have a SunOS version, and a Solaris version, and an HP version, and an Ultrix version, and an OSF version, and a MIPS version, and .... These days, VMS seems to have been replaced by NT, whereas a few of the Unix versions are gone, and have been replaced by various Linux distributions and of course the BSDs. > So define market. If UNIX is a specialisation of Multics and VMS > a specialisation of UNIX, then NT is but another UNIX <g>. Granted, > with a whole different API/ABI. So what else is new? <g,d&r> Of course, those are all just variants of ITS, done by people who didn't get it. So what? <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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