why learn UNIX

[john at frog.UUCP]

> In a recent article rbl at nitrex.UUCP ( Dr. Robin Lake ) wrote:
> >	UNIX, with it's pipe feature and the excellent Software Tools
> >	books to back it up, serves well in teaching students how to
> >	quickly analyze an end-user's real needs and quickly prototype
> >	a solution.  The fast analysis/prototype cycle results in systems...
> 
> WHAT IN THE HOLY GOOD GOD EARTH DO PIPES HAVE TO DO WITH RAPID PROTOTYPING??
> 
> This article sounds like a snow job...   growl.
> 
> garry wiegand   (garry%cadif-oak at cu-arpa.cs.cornell.edu)

A quick spelling checker:

tr '\t ' '\n' | sort | uniq | comm -23 - /usr/lib/dict/wordlist

Took me 3 minutes to write, including fishing around for the manual.

Given this, I can try it out, spell a few documents, and discover what I
need to add.  Eventually I'll reach the point where I ought to code it in
C, but by then I'll have a very good idea of how it should work.

Note that I used 3 pipes and 4 "Software Tools" that perform limited,
precisely describable jobs.


--
John Woods, Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA, (617) 626-1101
...!decvax!frog!john, ...!mit-eddie!jfw, jfw%mit-ccc at MIT-XX.ARPA

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