why Unix?

[Yigal Chripun]

On 08/04/2009 14:34, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

> My experience with WMI is that it is buggy and very slow, not to mention
> really complicated. I would hate to rely on it for scripting. On the
> other hand, having everything as a file allows me to use all existing
> file processing tools to deal with anything on a UNIX system. The file
> API is simple and doesn't require me to look at an object spec to do
> simple tasks.

well, WMI is supposed to be replaced and enhanced by powershell. So you 
should check that out.
I agree that a uniform and consistent API is important and I'm sure that 
MS managed to mess that up :) but that's besides the point. "Everything 
is a file" does not provide a uniform API but rather provides no API. 
Each unix tool has its own mini-syntax and its own set of command-line 
arguments and you need to learn how to use each tool separately beyond 
trivial use cases.
At my work, we program in a *nix environment (Solaris) and I also use 
Linux extensively So I know my way on *nix systems but I simply cannot 
remember all the different argument for each util. every time I need to 
find a file I need to ask a co-worker how to use "find". So in my 
experience there's nothing simple and uniform about unix tools and I use 
those constantly at work.

given that both options suck - I'd prefer dealing with objects rather 
than raw files that need to be parsed.
i.e. someDir.list() which returns an array of files is better than using 
ls on unix.

>
>> Windows has a different design than Unix's "everything is a file"
>> which IMO is a stupid legacy design from the 70's.
>
> The old "technology from the 70's" chestnut. Your opinion varies from
> 90% of people who actually use scripts. New technology for the sake of
> being new isn't better.

Was Colombus wrong when he said the world is round and 99.9% of people 
told him he's a fool?
My opinion is that there where better OS designs in the _60s_ than what 
we use today. "everything is a file" is a complete failure.
>
>> therefore, trying to do the unix way on windows with BAT files is
>> simply the wrong way. it doesn't work because it is not designed to
>> work like that.
>> my take on all this, I'm not a huge fan of windows and it sure has its
>> own problems, but this specific aspect is done much better than UNIX
>> and all those comments about "windows doesn't support unix's
>> "everything is a file" design and therefore it's crap" just show a lot
>> of ignorance.
>
> It's not crap, just not as good. It's a poor replacement for the
> "Everything is the same" design. Having everything use the same API has
> huge advantages in modularity. One of my hugest pet peeves with Windows
> is that it has several different APIs for I/O objects, and ony sockets
> support the select interface. I have no idea what Windows devs were
> smoking when they decided not to allow select on any object. Making
> efficient I/O driven apps that use more than just sockets is really
> difficult.

see above, MS got the it wrong. are you surprised? I'm not.
>
> -Steve