Also, something I'd read before (though I can't find a reference now) is that the "design by committee" was that everything filtered through Jean Ichbiah (I thi

Also, something I'd read before (though I can't find a reference now) is that the "design by committee" was that everything filtered through Jean Ichbiah (I think), who acted as benevolent dictator for the design process, and he was careful about the features forming a cohesive whole. Another thing was a take on the Jargon File entry where a good amount of hacker backlash was due to it being a language forced by the DoD, so of course it is going to be bad.