israel@qantel.UUCP ( Renegade@ex2564) (10/15/85)
As there appears to be a major debate brewing regarding the usefulness of UNIX to a less than expert user, I would like to suggest that future letters to this discussion be posted in net.unix (or maybe net.politics? :-)). But as long as I'm posting this already, I'll just stick in my two bits and shut up. If there is indeed one universal truth about UNIX, it is that it was not designed for casual users. More than anything else, it was originally designed as an ideal R & D environment for program development, which more often than not implies use by a fairly sophisticated user. To make the best use of UNIX, you really need to KNOW it. There are uncounted tricks one can use to really do something efficiently that aren't properly documented in the standard manuals supplied. It is because of this very situation that there is such a proliferation of UNIX 'hackers'. It really is a paradise environment for such people, who live for those magic moments when they discover something new about UNIX that wasn't in the manual, be it bug or feature. The thing about UNIX is, those who know how to use it well can do some fascinating things with it, particularly C programmers. Since C can let you get any with things that would make less nervy programmers cringe with fear, attaining a title of UNIX guru becomes something of a religious experience. Unfortunately, having attained such a hard won title, one is reluctant to give it up. What this means, is that having gone to all the trouble of learning such a sophiscated and intricate operating system, the users expect to have the opportunity (and perhaps rightly so), to apply their new-found skills in pursuit of their professional carreers. Students who picked up UNIX proficieny in college feel they are more comfortable continuing to work with it in the commercial market. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. UNIX was designed for providing programmers a useful environment for program development. Where things start going bad, however, is when one takes that extra step of using UNIX not merely as a tool in developing commercial (mostly business) products, but as a commercial product itself. Business systems work best when they are kept simple, and optimized to the needs of the business, in general making them as easy for the business in question as possible to implement, learn, and deal with on a day-to-day basis. UNIX is not optimized for such applications, particularly database processing, a major necessity for business applications. UNIX is far more sophisticated than the average business machine user requires, and is generally not as fast in handling transaction processing as most systems designed for the purpose. For what UNIX is designed for, it does well. I've been working with and on UNIX systems for eight years, even bought myself a UNIX PC (although I'd have been happier with 4.2 UNIX instead of SYSTEM V), and found it highly preferable to any of the other dozen or so systems I've done development work on. But I really don't think it makes sense in most business applications that I can imagine - it's just more aggravation than the average casual user should need to be put through to make a living. Then again, seeing as I'm primarily a hardware engineer, maybe I'll just shut up! -- Renegade of Berkeley MDS Qantel or Renegade Systems ucbvax!dual!qantel!israel ucbvax!dual!qantel!hamster!israel Disclaimer: "Who, me? I wasn't even there!"