From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!seismo!rlgvax!guy
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Title: Re: Is Unix Really This Bad?
Article-I.D.: rlgvax.1132
Posted: Tue Mar  1 13:29:28 1983
Received: Wed Mar  2 07:07:32 1983

Mr. Carrette did not specify why a superior environment is "(in)conceivable
within Unix philosophy".  The statement about "datastructures and primitives
well suited to the VAX instruction set" indicates his objection to UNIX may
be that it is oriented towards portable software.  True, but there is nothing
in UNIX that prohibits one from directly using the machine language (other
than the lack of a macro assembler, perhaps).  I'm not quite sure what
the "UNIX philosophy" refers to, either.  UNIX can support a wide range of
applications, constructed in a wide range of styles, with varying degrees
of success.  If there are some things that the operating system (I refer here
to the kernel; if a library routine gets in your way, any application
programmer can substitute their own) does poorly, constructive criticism of
UNIX would be valuable.  (I would like to see UNIX able to handle as wide a
range of applications as other general-purpose operating systems - such as
VMS - with the same degree of success.)  (Also note that either the IPC
mechanisms in 4.2BSD or the IPC mechanisms in USG UNIX 4.1 and later may have
significantly higher performance than VMS mailboxes; can anyone with experience
with these - preferably in the latest releases of those operating systems -
comment on this?)

I don't know why he claims that a proper implementation of NIL is "beyond the
scope of Unix system programmers to implement at reasonable cost"; I presume
he means that it would be too much work to change UNIX to support this
implementation of NIL.  Yes, VMS does have some features that UNIX (as of, say,
Seventh Edition or 4.1BSD or USG 3.0) doesn't; however, 4.2BSD may have what
he needs.  Again, some constructive criticism of UNIX would be helpful; I
see no evidence that UNIX, by the very nature of its internal design, is
incapable of doing more than a few things well.

						Guy Harris
						RLG Corporation
						...!decvax!mcnc!rlgvax!guy
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