Explaining The Windows/UNIX Cultural Divide

giampy writes "Joel Spolsky writes a review-like article on the last book of Eric S. Raymond (The Art of Unix Programming). His views on the cultural differences among Windows and Unix programmers are well explained. Overall, an interesting read." Also on the topic of Windows, badriram writes "Microsoft is reorganizing the windows team, it seems the are separating the OS core development. Seems like things heading in the right direction in creating a more secure OS, and making it more business oriented. Read the article here."

Comments

Re:Separation

[GlassUser]

So you're basically saying that *ix is better because it does less. You're dumping your angst and blame on the wrong culprit.

Re:The real reason behind "silence is golden"

[spitzak]

Boy you really don't get it, do you.

I used both Unix and VMS on 9600 baud video terminals (so no wasted paper, and very little wasted time, in fact I think the Unix machine printed slower because it went through a network and a VMS front end which did not like the character-based Unix interface much). I can tell you that the terseness of Unix was an incredible relief compared to VMS. I could see what I did, it was not buried in tons of boilerplate, and I could easily run other commands that would tell me that information (like "how many files") if I wanted to know it. This (and the simplified filenames where '/' and '\0' are the only reserved characters) was so amazingly liberating and stunning that I was sold.

In fact part of the reason there is Unix fanatics is that absolutley amazing relief we had when we first encountered it. Part of the livid hatred of Microsoft is that they did not copy Unix, instead reverting to filenames and a command style and CRLF pairs that we knew were obsoleted in 1970, and then having the unmitigated gall to claim they were "innovative". In fact if Microsoft had just made Windows Unix-compatable (and not even do a good job, Xenix would have been good enough) I really doubt anybody would have heard of Linux, and Microsoft would run every single programmable device in the world.

In fact Microsoft blew it totally, but they refuse to admit this and thus refuse to allow their programmers to do what is necessary (copy as much of Unix as possible, while keeping their own advantages). Instead they keep reinventing things, ignoring standards, and pissing people off endlessly.

Wake up, Microsoft. You could wipe Linux and everybody off the face of the planet in less than a year, if you would just make Windows Unix-compatable. This means put forward slashes in the filenames, get rid of CRLF (only read needs to use the binary flag), make readdir() work to show all the disks, and a few other really trivial things. And provide a modern shell and tools right now (the code is all available for free from GNU). The problem is you have to swallow your enormous ego and admit that there is nothing wrong with being compatable with the good ideas that came out before you.