How does man know?

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <53 at rsoft.bc.ca> frank at rsoft.UUCP (Frank I. Reiter) writes:
>The authors obviously expected that the usual case would be ...

Right, and instead of allowing users to decide how to configure
their own environment, they decided to force a particular usage
model on everybody.  The addition of an option to turn off the
inappropriate assumption is no excuse make making it in the
first place.

People who are having trouble understanding my viewpoint should
read the initial portion of Kernighan & Pike's "The UNIX
Programming Environment".  UNIX is not just any old operating
system, it embodies a point of view on how computing should be
done.  I believe that its early acquisition of enthusiastic
proponents was largely due to their appreciation of these ideas,
which have not lost their power when appropriately exploited.