why learn UNIX (pipes and prototyping)

[mouse at mcgill-vision.UUCP]

>>>> UNIX, with it's pipe feature and [...]
>>> WHAT [...] DO PIPES HAVE TO DO WITH RAPID PROTOTYPING??
>>> This article sounds like a snow job...   growl.
>> tr '\t ' '\n' | sort | uniq | comm -23 - /usr/lib/dict/wordlist
> hmm, this fascinated me... so I decided to try it, and it worked, and
> I did it as written on my VMS machine....  Now, explain to me why if
> I can do this on my UNIX machine AND I can do it on my VMS machine,
> why UNIX is better than VMS.

You've changed the question.  The original was "what do pipes have to
do with rapid prototyping?".  Granted, this question arose in a
discussion of "why learn UNIX", but the point the example was chosen to
illustrate is the one about prototyping.

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.

					der Mouse

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