Windows Refund day - reaction

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers)]

| 
| 	> As a result, we are seeing some W95isms in newer Unix software.  This
| 	> might  actually  be unfortunate, because think of how much better off
| 	> we'd be if the UI ideas had been borrowed from the Mac instead.

| 	But then we'd be borrowing Mac ideas which were borrowed from Xerox
| 	PARC ideas which were developed on Unix (OK, and LISP machine) systems...

Indeed.  I suppose one could argue that with all that borrowing  back
and  forth, there would be a sifting-and-winnowing process that would
lead to adoption of the best ideas (whatever that might  mean).   But
then,  looking  at  the  history  of the software field, it's just as
likely that each stage of borrowing would be done  mostly  by  people
who  "didn't  quite  get  it", and the result could just as easily be
junk.  ;-)

| 	I think the current Xerox PARC disparagement of WIMP approaches is 
| 	valid, and I'm just thrilled I can keep a command line interface while
| 	looking forward to integrating text-to-voice and voice-command and 
| 	video etc. to my Linux.

Support of command-line interfaces remains one of the real  strengths
of  Unix-like  systems.   I've  occasionally had fun with W95 and Mac
users, when I see them busily trying to remember  where  that  screen
was that handled the job they're trying to do.  I tell them that Unix
shells all have this amazing concept of a "search path", and all  you
have to know is the app's name in order to run it from anywhere.  The
human brain is quite good  at  remembering  names,  while  we're  not
nearly as good at remembering a path through a maze. It's interesting
that the usual response to this is silence (and sometimes  they  make
it  clear  that  I've  just aggravated them, but they aren't about to
admit why ;-).

I've long contended that the main value of any  windowing  system  is
that it provides an emulation of multiple dumb terminals. Back in the
days before we all had WIMP displays, I liked to show people how much
faster  I could get my work (software development) done if I had 3 or
4 terminals handy.  But even after such a demo, it was almost  always
impossible  to  get more than one terminal.  That "just wasn't done,"
despite calculations showing a 2-week payoff if a  programmer  got  a
second terminal.

Nowadays, I still have only one display,  but  it  can  hold  several
"terminals". And those terminals are better than real ones, because I
can resize them, select a small font to get a lot  of  text  visible,
and cut-and-paste between them. So the WIMP displays have been a real
gain, but not because they can display  pretty  pictures  (which  are
rarely  worth  a  thousand  words  of  something like C or perl), but
simply because they give me multiple text windows simultaneously.

Of course, to a one- or two-fingered typist, this is probably  rather
irrelevant,  and  a  mouse is just as good a keyboard as one with all
those zillions of confusing keys. But I've long been able to move all
my  ten  fingers independently, so I find a command-line interface to
be much more user-friendly  than  something  involving  navigating  a
random flock of windows and menus.