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Aucbvax.5847 fa.info-vax utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!info-vax Tue Jan 19 22:34:33 1982 Pandora:s box >From Lars.Ericson@CMU-10A Tue Jan 19 21:49:25 1982

- - - - Begin forwarded message - - - - Date: 19 January 1982 0948-EST (Tuesday) From: Jeff.Shrager at CMU-10A To: Lars Ericson at CMU-10A Subject: From duane Origin: A310JS1E at CMU-10A; 19 Jan 1982 0953-EST

- - - - Begin forwarded message - - - - Date: 19 Jan 1982 9:05-EST From: Duane.Williams at IUS at CMU-10A Subject: Re: CL is important To: Jeff.Shrager at CMU-10A Message-Id: <82/01/19 0905.128@IUS> In-Reply-To: Jeff.Shrager's message of 19 January 1982 0725-EST (Tuesday) Origin: N900EN0M at CMU-10A; 19 Jan 1982 0929-EST

My exposure to operating systems/environments has been pretty limited, but I suspect that none is without problems.

You complain that the availability of pipes leads to inefficient programming. Probably true. But you would have a hard time convincing me that it is not nice that Unix programmers have been trained to write programs that talk to one another conveniently, and pretty universally. Users can string them together in pretty arbitrary (and often unforeseen) ways, and I think this is a very nice feature. Very little of the work I do turns on efficiency. If it is a question of having to wait a couple of extra seconds, I really don't care, not if I can get the job done without days of programming effort.

Obviously I was not brought up to think that Unix is the god of OS design, and I certainly don't approve of dogmatism. On the other hand I also don't approve of your style of attacking it--exageration combined with raving. Surely, Unix is not all bad, and even the design features that could be improved upon also have some good qualities. I'm not sure what good it does to argue around here that "Unix should be trashed so better systems will be developed", but I am sure that you won't be taken seriously until you tone down your argument to something more realistic. Trying to win the whole war with one battle just isn't going to work. - - - - End forwarded message - - - - - - - - End forwarded message - - - -

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