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Aihuxl.105 fa.unix-wizards utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!mhtsa!ihnss!ihuxl!jej Sun Aug 23 17:28:29 1981 I'm In With the In Crowd... Subject: Cybercrud Part Two?

Ted Nelson, in his book *Computer Lib*, spends considerable time (and rightly so) blasting those people who design hard-to-use systems; the most notable example of this is Obscenity System/3[67]0 (my term, not his). *Computer Lib* came out when Unix was doing the same, so he had only a short blurb about it, but therein he praised it. He did the same in *The Home Computer Revolution*.

That too was proper; Unix is indeed a powerful tool and one that encourages tool-making by its users. It would certainly be a shame if a priesthood of hackers developed around Unix with the same point of view as the author of the "Unix is not for sissies" crack.

Tool developers seem to forget whether terms are common English, from common use in the aisle where they work, or from their own heads--James Joyce may have gotten away with the latter in *Finnegan's Wake*, but supposedly documentation of programs has different ends. What is one to make of

"...on some other systems, [the offset fseek(3S) returns] is a magic cookie..."

?

James Jones (ihuxl!jej)

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