Summary of responses regarding Jim Joyces Unix Bookstore

[Larry Wall]

In article <12565 at netcom.UUCP> ergo at netcom.UUCP (Isaac Rabinovitch) writes:
: There's another, more legitimate difference.  B. Dalton employees are
: not long on computer expertise (though they no longer think that Unix
: is a programming language!), and can't give you much help on selecting
: books.

That's interesting.  I think Unix IS a programming language.  A big,
complicated, hard-to-learn, not-very-portable, highly undisciplined
language with several alternate syntaxes--an unholy, convulsing, constantly
mutating mixture of minimalism and pluralism--an entire ecosystem of
programming.

That doesn't mean I don't like it, of course.  :-)

And THAT doesn't mean I won't try to change it.

Somewhere there's got to be a balance between "I love you just the way
you are" and "Be all that you can be".

But when you start looking at Unix as a language, it gets a little ugly.

Larry Wall
lwall at jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov