readline bashing (was POSIX bashing)

[Joshua Osborne]

In article <1991Apr04.025733.18462 at decuac.dec.com>, mjr at hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. Ranum) writes:
> 	This is something that's always amazed me - I'm suspect that if
> format studies were done, we'd find that only a minor amount of the
> "nifty functionality" that gets added to applications is ever used. Does
> anyone have pointers to any real research in this area? Has anyone done
> any studies about, say, what amount of the average editor's command
> set is used (10%? 15%?) or - the average window manager's? How much
> useless code is actually out there - has anyone even tried to measure
> it?

I tend to use about 60% of the commands available to me in vi (I don't use map
very offen), however this is 60% of what I have read about, not 60% of what is
in Ultrix and SunOS's vi's.  I use *all* the commands available to me in my window
manager.  I configured out everything I don't use, and put in things I do.
However most of the code in the version of tvtwm I use is never executed (I used
a profiler), approx 40% of the code is used (by me) on a mono system.  More on a
color one.

> 	I seem to recall reading someplace that the original UNIX
> accounting utilities were also used as a tool to feed back what
> commands were consuming how many resources, versus how much they
> were being used, etc. Does anyone still do this? Does anyone *DARE*!?

For a class assignment I checked what commands diffrent classes use, but I
didn't check how much CPU was used (my program calculated think times, and
could re-create a not very realistic command sequence baised on Markov chains).

I found that for classes ranging from the freshman "This is Unix, this is Unix
Mail..." to grad classes doing numerical analysis with a 4th year "Advenced OS"
course sandwiched in between that the top 20 commands account for 80% to 95% of
all command invocations (at least over a 2 week period).
 
> 	A good friend of mine has this theory that computers today
> are really no more useful than the woefully "obsolete" ones we see
> in the computer museum - by the time you factor in the amount of
> sheer gunk they're wasting their time doing (painting nifty-keen 3-d
> widgets, etc, etc, etc) and the sheer human cost of *understanding*
> all that gunk, they are no faster, no more cost effective, and no
> more capable at doing "real work" than they used to be. Of course,
> that's an utterly insane argument, isn't it?

Well I can tell you that I get alot more done today on a X terminal running off
a Sun 4/60 (SS1) then I did a few years ago with an Ataris ST, and I got more done
on that then I got done on a C=64, I got less done on the 64 then I got done on a
IBM 370, I did get more done on the ST then the 370.  So for me I get more done
on a "modern" computer then the old ones.  However I don't use fake 3D, it doesn't
work real well on a mono system.  (and I don't on color ones, I do like color
better, I can find my mouse quicker on them).
-- 
           stripes at eng.umd.edu          "Security for Unix is like
      Josh_Osborne at Real_World,The          Multitasking for MS-DOS"
      "The dyslexic porgramer"                  - Kevin Lockwood
"CNN is the only nuclear capable news network..."
    - lbruck at eng.umd.edu (Lewis Bruck)