From: erc@s116.slcslip.indirect.com (Ed Carp [khijol Sysadmin])
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 95 16:04:13 PST
To: jamesd@netcom.com
Subject: Re: DONT READ -- Continuing James Donald flamewar
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9501291438.A12603-0100000@netcom4>
Message-ID: <m0rYjat-0004IhC@s116.slcslip.indirect.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


> Whereas Perry -- the salesman who refused to take 
> yes for ananswer when dealing with Netscape --  is 
> filled with passionate rage.
> 
> What is up Perry -- do you have piles, or is the 
> sawdust and chickenshit diet putting your temper 
> on a short fuse?

While there may be something said for Perry's technical expertise, that
certainly doesn't excuse his rudeness.

> One can reasonably argue, as he is now arguing, 
> that unix is a good modern development environment.  
> I think he is wrong -- I was amused at how unix folk 
> were impressed at how I casually put up windows gui 
> interface for a throwaway program that would
> only be used once.

That all depends on what you are expecting in a development environment, and
what the goal of the development project is.  If your goal is to quickly
produce a GUI interface, then Windows and VB is indeed the way to go.  VB
has reasonable debugging facilities built in.  Not quite as good as gdb,
but reasonable.

If your goal is to produce non-GUI code, then UNIX offers a superior development
environment.

No operating system can be all things to all people (much as Bill Gates would
like that to happen).  Most UNIX systems suck at doing real-time processing,
and most Windows systems suck at doing anything approaching preemptive
multitasking.  The right tool for the right job - why make one environment
or the other do everything?

I've been hacking UNIX for 10 years, and doing Windows programming for almost
that long, so I've seen both environments, and know that one size *doesn't*
fit all.

> But to claim, as some have claimed, that unix is 
> as user friendly as Windows or the Mac, when 
> suitably configured -- is a sign of utter irrationality 
> that shows that those who assert such a fantastic claim 
> are incapable or rational thought or rational
> discussion on the topic.

It could be argued by some that UNIX is even less user-friendly than
MS-DOS, but that comes from the fact that UNIX wasn't designed to be anything
approaching a production system.  It was written by programmers for
programmers to hack on.

> The Holy bible attitude to unix is illustrated by the 
> fact that the most flagrant and outrageous unix bugs 
> are held to be correct behavior by definition -- 
> "Unix does this, therefore it is right, and if you 
> destroy your files as a result of this behavior then 
> unix is right, and you are wrong."

I'd say "UNIX does it *this* way, therefore it's correct ... for UNIX."
Different OS's do things differently.  Windows is designed to hold the
user's hand.  UNIX isn't.
-- 
Ed Carp, N7EKG    			Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com
801/534-8857 voicemail			801/460-1883 digital pager
Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key		an88744@anon.penet.fi
                       ** PGP encrypted email preferred! **

Cop: "How many beers have you had tonight, bro?"
Suspect: "Seventy."  -- from the TV show "Cops"