karl@dartvax.UUCP (Karl Berry.) (10/18/84)
Alex Colvin [dartvax!alexc] writes that Unix* is hopelessly inadequate in some areas, and not intended as a general purpose system. I had thought that one of the basic premises of the Unix design was that it would be flexible enough so that what the authors didn't include, someone else could, with little effort. Although I don't hold it up as the Operating System to end All Operating Systems either, I am curious as to in what areas it fails. It is also strange to me that Alex [apparently] lists APL, Snobol, and Algol as languages that an educated CS student should be exposed to. Algol is perhaps the precursor of modern declarative languages, but it is rather dated now. Modula-2, Ada**, or some such would seem to be a better choice for that area. APL is such a language which perhaps has its place, but I don't think that place is a substantial share of the market, and hence hardly necessary. An applicative language, like Lisp or Prolog [Is Prolog applicative?] would seem to cover the other major approach to language theory better. It's true that Unix doesn't have standard compilers for Modula-2 or Ada, but it does have Lisp and Pascal, and so seems to cover most important concepts in languages. Finally, I have no idea what a modern operating system is -- what have been the advances since Unix? karl@dartmouth.csnet %%% dartvax!karl