shell architecture (to glob or not to glob)

Stephen Vinoski vinoski at apollo.HP.COM
Wed Jan 23 04:38:00 AEST 1991


In article <4584 at lib.tmc.edu> jmaynard at thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:
>In article <365 at bria> mike at bria.UUCP (Michael Stefanik) writes:
>>The real challenge is to provide an end-user interface that is simple to
>>use, and covers most of the bases.  However, a fundamental deviation from
>>the philosphy of "power to the programmer" would be a major mistake, in my
>>mind anyhow.
>
>Unix is at the far end of the scale: it's actively user-hostile. Power to
>the programmer means incomprehensibility to the user. I wouldn't even
>consider handing a user a raw $ or % prompt, X terminal or not. It's simply
>too daunting. Unix' terseness is a win for a programmer, but a major loss
>for a user. It took me two years of running a Unix system at home before I
>got comfortable with it, and I'm a systems programmer by trade. How long
>does it take a user?

Thank you for reinforcing my opinion of those who call themselves "systems
programmers."  Two years?  Sheesh!


-steve


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