>and also a community which has already poured thousands of man-years of effort into making stuff you can use for web applications I would wager a goodly amoun

>and also a community which has already poured thousands of man-years of effort into making stuff you can use for web applications I would wager a goodly amount that you've hit the nail on the head here. It seemed at first as though bundling all of the unix environment together and abandoning "The Unix Way" was a triumph of advertising and people's laziness. Thinking further, it's pretty clear that mobilizing a community around a varied basket of tools would have been nigh impossible. It's pretty interesting how important this developer/social aspect has been to the development of the web. Larry Wall has certainly been in on the joke all along.