why learn UNIX (pipes and prototyping)

[mwm at eris.UUCP]

In article <634 at mcgill-vision.UUCP> mouse at mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse) writes:
>Seems to me that the fact that VMS is lifting ideas from UNIX instead
>of the other way around says something about which is more useful.

And what makes you think the flow is all one way? I can think of a
handfull of things that were in early VMeS's (say, 3.x) that weren't
in early BSD releases (4.0) that are in 4.[23], or have been added by
various people.

Trouble is, most of those things are things that are in any production
OS, so you can't point and say that "this came from VMS." They could
have come from AOS, or MVS, or Primos, or.....

In any case, the important question isn't "where'd it come from," the
important question is "when will it be in my favorite OS?" Being
willing and able to adapt good ideas will improve your OS faster than
trying to come up with them by yourself.

	<mike