4 ms·

The complaints here don't seem to be much about how Unix works in a deep way, but rather the particular language/syntax which is used to interact with it ("rm",

The complaints here don't seem to be much about how Unix works in a deep way, but rather the particular language/syntax which is used to interact with it ("rm", etc.). While that's certainly annoying in many ways, so are almost all languages in common use. You could write a lot about how horrible English is (or German, as Mark Twain famously did). But English is a useful standard - politics, inertia, and the value of a common language are forces far stronger than the fact that the language is more annoying than it could be. Am I being trolled? Probably :(

alxlaz 6y ago
The back story to this is that the DIGITAL Command Language (more or less the equivalent of an Unix shell), with its excellent filesystem-level features and the environment around it (e.g. the well-written and extremely thorough documentation) was very much light-years ahead of anything you could get on most Unix environments at the time. Going back to the Unix shell felt a bit like a step back. FWIW, there are plenty of complaints about things other than syntax after the fifth paragraph or so, too ;).
- CaptainZapp 6y ago
  Ah yes! Documentation for VMS and the whole shebang of layered products. Until this day, in my book, the absolute gold standard when it comes to documentation. Having the arguably best tools suite to develop (LSE, Debugger, what have you) also didn't hurt. I still believe it the best operating system I ever worked with. Ironically the article describes quite precisely why DEC failed. Most of the company had a visceral hate of anything Unix and anybody involved with anything that even smelled faintly of Unix was a second class citizen. Well, looking at Ultrix may have been the main reason for that. Ironically and decades later they had one of the best Unix offers on the market with Tru64 Unix. DEC was in many, many respects an awesome company. Shame that Compaq (and later HP) never really had a clue about what they actually got there. Source: I worked for DEC from 90 - 94.
  - kyuudou 6y ago
    >Most of the company had a visceral hate of anything Unix and anybody involved with anything that even smelled faintly of Unix was a second class citizen. Reminds me of ye olde UNIX-Hater's Handbook[0] 0:http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf
  - mtVessel 6y ago
    > Until this day, in my book, the absolute gold standard when it comes to documentation. Amen to that! I started my career in a VMS shop, did a lot of DCL scripting. I have never seen better technical docs, before or since.
- bregma 6y ago
  DCL was so much better than MCR. In DCL I could use "DELETE sys$home:* .* ;* " but with MCR I had to resort to "PIP/DELE [7,1]* .* ; * " DEC just kept evolving for the better. Of course, sh was just "rm -rf * .??*" and that is so much more discoverable because nothings says "delete all your files" more than some line noise.
lokedhs 6y ago
You are right. Some other complaints have have no aged well either (especially things like case insignificance, which we all know is extremely difficult to get right once you leave the confines of English). Unix has a lot of issues on a lower level, but very few people discuss that, since it's a complicated topic.

alxlaz 6y ago

The back story to this is that the DIGITAL Command Language (more or less the equivalent of an Unix shell), with its excellent filesystem-level features and the environment around it (e.g. the well-written and extremely thorough documentation) was very much light-years ahead of anything you could get on most Unix environments at the time. Going back to the Unix shell felt a bit like a step back. FWIW, there are plenty of complaints about things other than syntax after the fifth paragraph or so, too ;).

CaptainZapp 6y ago
Ah yes! Documentation for VMS and the whole shebang of layered products. Until this day, in my book, the absolute gold standard when it comes to documentation. Having the arguably best tools suite to develop (LSE, Debugger, what have you) also didn't hurt. I still believe it the best operating system I ever worked with. Ironically the article describes quite precisely why DEC failed. Most of the company had a visceral hate of anything Unix and anybody involved with anything that even smelled faintly of Unix was a second class citizen. Well, looking at Ultrix may have been the main reason for that. Ironically and decades later they had one of the best Unix offers on the market with Tru64 Unix. DEC was in many, many respects an awesome company. Shame that Compaq (and later HP) never really had a clue about what they actually got there. Source: I worked for DEC from 90 - 94.
- kyuudou 6y ago
  >Most of the company had a visceral hate of anything Unix and anybody involved with anything that even smelled faintly of Unix was a second class citizen. Reminds me of ye olde UNIX-Hater's Handbook[0] 0:http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf
- mtVessel 6y ago
  > Until this day, in my book, the absolute gold standard when it comes to documentation. Amen to that! I started my career in a VMS shop, did a lot of DCL scripting. I have never seen better technical docs, before or since.
bregma 6y ago
DCL was so much better than MCR. In DCL I could use "DELETE sys$home:* .* ;* " but with MCR I had to resort to "PIP/DELE [7,1]* .* ; * " DEC just kept evolving for the better. Of course, sh was just "rm -rf * .??*" and that is so much more discoverable because nothings says "delete all your files" more than some line noise.

lokedhs 6y ago

You are right. Some other complaints have have no aged well either (especially things like case insignificance, which we all know is extremely difficult to get right once you leave the confines of English). Unix has a lot of issues on a lower level, but very few people discuss that, since it's a complicated topic.