Choice of OS of LtU readers

A totally different question for in the fun department,

I was wondering about the 'geekiness' of the LtU crowd. As one of the measures of that would be choice of OS people work on, I wondered

What is your favourite OS you work on (at home, or at the office)?

I run Fedore Core 3 on an Asus S5N notebook.

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Geekiness?

At work I run Linux because we've been a Linux shop since '97. At home I run windows and possibly Linux at the same time via colinux, but I prefer windows as a development environment if I'm doing crossplatform work. I don't get religious about operating systems.

I use Mac OS X. I used Window

I use Mac OS X. I used Windows until about 2000, when I stopped Windows entirely and alternated between Slackware, Debian, and FreeBSD. Then a couple years ago I switched to the Mac. I have my old x86 machine at my desk too, which now dual boots Linux and Windows XP. I honestly don't recall which Linux distribution is on there, if that tells you anything about how rarely I turn that machine on.

Life is Sad...

LtU readers love cleanliness, simplicity, orthogonality, power, correctness, expressiveness.

Hardware is all about doing the least and then shoveling it over to the software guys to make it work. To do the bit fiddling, interrupt handling, polling, time sensitive control code, etc. etc.

OS is about smearing a thin vaguely sane and consistent layer over the hardware mess.

Thus the gap between the order and cleanliness of program language design and the mess that is hardware grows and grows.

You see it even in terms of implementation languages. Who these days can bear to write a compile to machine code compiler? We all write compile to C or compile to Scheme or interpreted in Scheme or something like that.

At one end you have the optimization freaks that tweak yet another cycle out of gcc every 6 month or so. And at the other you have the language design freaks. And never do we meet in the middle.

The closest we come is Emacs and now Eclipse, where the developers have tried to hide the horror that is the hardware and the OS under layers and layers of developement environment.

Anyhoo, I use Linux for preference, but periodically scream and rage at it's unneeded complexity. Unfortunately Windows has chosen the self defeating route of adding more in the hope it will be simpler.

Complexity

And it's not enough to abstract the hardware to build a relatively simple software system, because you have to support numerous extremely complex web technologies (HTML, Flash, ...) if you want to build a useable OS.

Ubuntu Linux

at work, Windows, like most. Cygwin in for some fun. :)

My 'puter

I run Debian on a Thinkpad X31 (my only computer - it's great). My desktop environment is a heavily personalized Sawfish and Emacs. (I fight Debian to keep GNOME and KDE uninstalled.) Capslock is Control and Right-Shift is Hyper. I use virtual desktops and don't need overlapping windows. To read mail I ssh to the mailserver and run Gnus there.

win2k

Windows 2000 at work and at home. As I am an enthusiast of free-as-in-freedom software I usually try to switch to Linux (at home) every once in a while but my bad Linux karma strikes and something corrupts my installation. I was using a Knoppix variant but my file-system crashed and now when I try to boot I get a kernel panic.

My secret dream is writing the one OS to rule them all, after I finish writing the one PL to rule them all and the one type system to rule them all.

Mostly Linux

Mostly Linux - Kubuntu Breezy 32bit and 64bit - and some winxp. Use cygwin for Windows development + porting.

Saving for a mac!

OSX of course

Who wouldn't run this OS if given the choice?

It's UNIX with Microsoft Office & Adobe to interface with the normal folk.

It's UNIX with Eclipse / IntelliJ to interface with the mediocre.

It's UNIX with Emacs & gcc / Alegro Lisp for my own deep thoughts.

Nevermind it has the fatest in-PDF search & display with Spotlight to search in all those obscure CS papers when I recall something I read but can't place it. This has been an amazing thing for me personally.

It's UNIX with Eclipse /

It's UNIX with Eclipse / IntelliJ to interface with the mediocre.

I see you are a new member. The atmosphere at LtU is normally non-condescending and tries to avoid insulting comments like the above.

I started out as an Emacs user, then used modern IDEs like Eclipse, and have recently been using Emacs to learn Lisp/Haskell/Oz/Isabelle. Emacs just feels clunky and outdated.

You're not mediocre

Obviously I meant it on a whimsical note, I had no idea someone would be so easily offended. If anything, being new, I have problems ascertaining temperament.

In short - Jeff, I don't think you're mediocre :-)

It strikes me as elitist.

It strikes me as elitist. Many Lispers take this view, with Paul Graham leading the charge. My problem with people like him is that they are too evangelical, and take a single-minded view with Lisp at the center. So comments like "mediocre" are not innocent.

I'm not really enamored to any particular language/tool. They all have their strengths & weaknesses.

Maybe

My problem with people like him is that they are too evangelical...

Maybe that's because they've found something that was very liberating and they want others to experience the same feeling?

That said, I agree with your sentiments. I've never really understood why people consider Java/C# to be "languages for the masses" or "languages for the mediocre" and Lisp/Scheme to be "languages for the elite." Scheme and Common Lisp are arguably much simpler than C#. In fact, when I first learned Lisp, my first thought was "This is so simple, you don't even have to hardly think about how to write a solution: you just write down what your thinking." When I program in Common Lisp and especially Scheme I rarely have to think about syntax, instead I focus on the problem at hand; this makes my life simpler: I just do it. (Side note: there are some features of Common Lisp I really like, but some need to removed: Scheme code always feels so much more simple and elegant to me.) C#, however, is a different story. When I code in C#, I am always concerned with two things: syntax, and how to convert the problem from a natural (for me) solution in to one that C# will understand (since Scheme and especially Common Lisp support multiple ways of thinking problems can generally be expressed close to their "natural" form in these languages). In fact, C# is so complicated that I wouldn't even think about writing a program without Visual Studio: doing so is pretty much impossible. Now granted with Visual Studio, C# is a fairly simple language but, my question is: how much simpler and more productive could languages like Scheme and Common Lisp be in a similar environment? (Dr. Scheme is a really cool Scheme environment that is fairly powerful.) The major problem with Scheme and Common Lisp (and many languages with non-imperative features/ideas) is the learning curve. Once you get past the fundamental ideas (functions as first class objects, the parenthesis, functional programming style, etc.) it's easy, and you’ll find yourself thinking in that mode, at which point you find yourself able to just write down the solution much easier than you could with a more syntax bound language). Until then, you might find the language difficult if you've trained yourself in a different paradigm.

IDEs are very important

As far as I'm concerned, no programming language is worth using unless it has an IDE. It doesn't have to be as complex as Visual Studio, but it needs a basic code editor and debugger.

I remember trying to learn assembly in the old compile and pray method. Trying to figure out what was actually happening at runtime was nearly impossible. Later I retook the class using MASM (think DOS edit with a machine-level debugger) and everything made sense. The difference was incomparable.

Now I am not saying you need to have a mono-theistic one-true IDE like Visual Basic, but at least throw me a bone. Give me something to help me understand exactly what the program is doing.

This is especially true with languages like LISP. I had a lot of difficulty learning this language because I never knew what was in memory or what order things were being performed in.

By there way, is there any IDE for LISP with a decent editor and debugger? The last time I used it all I had was a command-line interface.

Lisp IDE

By there way, is there any IDE for LISP with a decent editor and debugger? The last time I used it all I had was a command-line interface.

Depending on the definition of Lisp you're interested in, try DrScheme.

odd

"no programming language is worth using unless it has an IDE"

That's odd, since language designers are designing a language, not tools to deal with it. Is a command-line interpreter and a text editor ok to you as an IDE? (loop edit compile run)...

Not necessarily low, but definitely lower

I do believe that even a basic IDE improves productivity. Consider the most primitive IDE, which is just a LISP or Python REPL loop. Though it doesn't allow for stepping through code, you can at least get memory dumps after each command. And that gives you the ability to determine if your command did what you expected it to.

That's odd, since language

That's odd, since language designers are designing a language, not tools to deal with it. Is a command-line interpreter and a text editor ok to you as an IDE? (loop edit compile run)...

No. It needs at least a way to step through the code and display what is in memory.

I realize that, in the initial stages, language designers need to focus on the language and not the tools. But at some point they need to put the effort in to polish the tools if they expect people like me to consider using them for any serious work.

REPL is the best debugger

As for me, I have no idea on how to debug code in language which does not provide a decent REPL. The level of introspection available with visual studio-style debuggers is simply unacceptable.

Windows XP

The single reason I use it is because I can play Myst family of games on it.

Mac OS X

You know the Myst games also run on Mac?

My main "axe" of choice is a low-end Apple iBook running OS X. I also have a Win XP/Mandrake Linux box at university which only ever boots Windows to view password-protected Excel files I'm sometimes sent — can OpenOffice handle these yet? Oh, it was also booted to play Façade (for research purposes!). I use the Ion non-overlapping window manager on the Linux box which is really nice, and has given me an incentive to learn some Lua. Most of the apps I actually use are cross-platform, so I have a pretty similar set-up on all 3 OSs.

LtU's new server OS

LtU's new server is running Debian stable (sarge). We would have installed a Haskell- or Scheme-based OS, but Drupal doesn't run on any of those. :)

I mostly run Debian at home, too, with KDE. (Luke, you may as well give in: overlapping windows are a superset of non-overlapping windows, you know.)

I also keep a Win2K machine around for work purposes.

Debian

At home, Debian/Gnome (with bits of KDE). Oh, and there's Windows XP, too, for whenever I feel like playing.

At work, some version of Red Hat, with Gnome, too.

Linux all around

Fedora Core 4 at work, on my home laptop and server, Internet Tablet 2005 Software Edition (Debian-based Linux) on my Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, and DD-WRT (Linux) on my router. My wife uses Windows XP, though.

Dual boot WinXP / Ubuntu

WinXP for audio work, games; Ubuntu for everything else. That's at home. At work, it's WinXP with Visual Studio.

Same here.

Home: WinXP for games; Ubuntu for everything else. Work: WinXP with Visual Studio 2005.

I wonder if Frank Atanassow

I wonder if Frank Atanassow runs FreeBSD? ;)

For development, Linux

both at work (Red Hat workstations, MontaVista on the embedded targets), and at home (SUSE 9.3). Do some development at work on Solaris hosts (via remote login), when working on targets running vxWorks.

Have a PC running Windows at work, but that's mainly for email and other desktop apps. Have a PC running Windows at home, but that's mainly for my wife. :) Haven't launched a compiler or IDE under Windows in quite some time.

OpenBSD

Currently on my Thinkpad X23, I use OpenBSD, and once a month Slax (Slackware based live-CD distribution) for netbanking (I refuse to install java or any other bloated software). I try to stay as far away from X or any other GUI as possible. Mostly I succeed: I only use X to read pdf or ps documents, view pictures and films. For everything else, the command prompt is my salvage and blessing. I haven't played computer games since I was 13 years old: Programming was more fun!

I used GNU-Linux and Win2K in 2000 and from 2001 GNU-Linux-distros only, with the exception of a quick peek at BeOS. I've used mostly Debian and Debian based distros, but also Arch Linux, Gentoo, FreeBSD, SUSE and many others I cannot even remember anymore.

I like OS'es a lot as well as programming languages, and have often peeked at many different more or less accademic systems like AROS, EROS, Minix, Haiku, Oberon, Lisp machines and so on. Whatever has something interesting concept to offer, even something as simple as FreeDOS! As I've grown older, my hunger for "simplicity, generality and clarity" (The Practive of Programming by R. Pike and B. Kernighan) has increased, although I find myself more and more pragmatic with regard to any technology that isn't too crappy! Most technology these days is crap.

My workstation at the office

My workstation at the office runs SuSE Linux, as does my home workstation. But the latter has been more or less superceded by my recent Powerbook 12" acquisition, running Mac OS X. It's pretty nice.

Mostly Fedora Core 4 Linux

I run FC4 on my main laptop, main workstation, and servers. I run Mac OS X on one workstation and one laptop and Win2K on another workstation for compatibility with clients' environments and for things like iTunes.

NetBSD

NetBSD at home and at work. Ratpoison as a window manager. I try to avoid X11 applications, other than gv and xpdf.

Debian Testing

Debian Testing at work.

At home I use my wife's Windows XP laptop to play PLT Scheme's demo game "Jewels" or sometimes type up class notes in LyX or LaTeX.

GNU/Linux

Debian unstable for past 5-6 years though I'm seriously thinking of Ubuntu for my new system I'm building this spring. Debian stable on my server and the servers at work. I don't have a workstation at work as I telecommute. UI-wise I prefer light-weight and customizability spending most of my time in a CLI environment.

Emacs

Running atop Gentoo GNU/Linux mostly, but with a WindowsXP partition when an unavoidable requirement strikes.
Either way, it's emacs.

Emacs as OS

Not long ago, I came across a quip: Emacs would be a pretty good OS, if it was shipped with a decent text editor. :-)

There's always the vi emulation mode...

For those who enjoy that sort of thing. (Like me. :)

Debian and now Mac OS X

My main machine essentially runs Debian Woody, installed piecemeal and with various bits of hand compiling. Crufty, but it works. I first installed Linux in 1993 as a dual-boot with OS/2, but nowadays my main machine is Linux only.

I am currently typing this on my new Apple iBook. Fortunately Mac OS X automatically recognises 2 button mice if you plug one in, so I can use my beloved Microsoft Trackball Explorer. (Microsoft make the best mice even if I don't rate their OS).

Work is Windows 2000 and Solaris Unix.

Oh, and my 9 year old son's machine runs Ubuntu, and my daughters have an old machine running Windows 98.

Pretty eclectic I suppose.

MacOS X, Ubuntu, WinXP

My main workstation and laptop both run MacOS X, but only because using QuickSilver as a shell integrates my information and lets me forget more things than any other OS allows. Basically I can't be as productive in any other OS because they don't support something like it - and I don't just mean as a launcher; it's a integrating shell.

FreeBSD 6 , Windows XP, Nintendo DS and Gamecube

It is best to have both FreeBSD and Windows boxen around.

- FreeBSD is more fun to develop.
- Windows gives less hassle when wanting to do multimedia (dvd watching, internet radio, video playback) and interfacing to cheap hardware devices
- for some fun in between (when traveling) nothing beats a Nintendo DS handheld!
- on the rare occasions I want to play on a big screen at home, I turn on the Nintendo Gamecube (I simply hate being forced to upgrade my hardware by recent games, I prefer stable console platforms)

However I was able to install FreeBSD 6 on an Asus notebook,
and Wlan, sound, etc. all work.
I am only missing the ability to view quicktime videos within firefox on that box right now, which might work after a bit of tinkering
and to use the HP USB scanner/printer. (No idea what is possible here).

Quite impressing.

Many

My workstation at work is MS Windows XP, but that wasn't my choice. Although, I could get them to switch me to Linux. I might even convince them to switch my workstation for a Mac. It doesn't really matter a lot to me since most of my actual work is done on Linux, Unix, & VxWorks with MS Windows only acting as the X server or SSH client. Plus, until we convince corporate to abandon Lotus Notes, it's conventient to have the MS Windows Notes client.

At home, I choose Macs for my wife & kids. & I use the Macs quite a lot myself. My own home workstation is Linux as is my server. I'm considering BSD for those machines, though.

I do actually have a box running MS Windows 2000 at home, but it is little used except as a print server & in the very rare cases when we really need to access a website that only works with the Windows version of MSIE.

To pick a single favorite, I'd have to choose Linux. I enjoy the freedom & infinite flexibility that open source provides. I like that my default install has so much. Whenever I get interesting in a programming language, I almost always find it's already installed! & while I greatly appreciate the Mac user experience, I personally get along just fine with BASH.

No favorite

I use Windows XP Pro at work, because I have to (need Visual Studio and 3DS MAX, for example). I use Windows XP at home, because it's a hassle free option. Keeping up with patches and spyware tools and so on has turned out to be much less stressful than fighting driver problems and such under Linux (which I'm comfortable with and have used at home and work at various times).

I'll probably be using OS X later this year, because Apple makes some nice notebook computers, and I've been wanting one :)

Years ago I did development under Mac OS 7.x, simply because that was my target market.

Everyone else is doing it...

I used Linux for about 10 years (Slackware, RedHat, Debian, Gentoo), but switched to exclusively OS X at home about a year ago. So far I have no regrets at all.

I run Debian on a colocated server for web/mail service (and mail reading: go mutt!) and various other things.

At work I have a RedHat workstation and all of our production code runs on Linux. I have a laptop with Win2K that I use for email, IM, PLT slideshow, and reading/editing documents that "need" to be in MS Office formats. I'm really only marginally competent with Windows, so I avoid using it when possible.

For what it's worth I'm also a crazy "no overlapping windows" guy. I use ion3 (go Lua!) and have no regrets at all. (In fact, my only complaints about OS X relate to the difficulty of configuring the window management behavior or dropping in a seamless replacement.)

Windows, sadly

It just works.

ubuntu

It just works too... :)

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question...

The correct Question is...

"As a Program Language Design Geek, what OS currently holds most promise of fulfilling my dreams of simplicity, elegance and power and is hence worthy at least of my attention, support and occupying a dual boot space on my disk?"

http://tunes.org/ Alas, seems to have collapse under the weight of analysis paralysis.

Gnu Hurd is the dream of a OS Guru, and the nightmare of a program language designer.

While I love my Linux, I hate it's inelegance. Windows makes me weep with rage and frustration.

There are many things that are just dys-functional about any of the *nix's. (As oppose to "functional programming" elegance.)

So what OS is out there that revives the old TUNES battle cry, "Useful, Not Expedient"?

Slate?

The OS focus plus the analysis paralysis of Francois, etc., really did kill the TUNES project, years before I got involved. There was also a good measure of libertarian politics plus the stubborn unwillingness of the OS fanatics who joined to learn even the least interesting high-level languages (e.g. Lisp).

It's only me working on Slate right now, plus many intermittent volunteers. Slate just puts together Lisp and Smalltalk ideas, and hopefully Erlang and E soon. It's also a scripting language with its own environment. The GUI is finally coming together, with a lot of ideas behind that. If I can manage to get most of the good ideas from the "dynamic" / "living" language community together in one place, and keep it flexible enough that people who don't "get" that paradigm won't be bothered by it, then I'll consider it a success.

I don't think it's worth making a better OS until this hodge-podge of better-language islands decides to compromise to work together - without a conception of a truly better environment that is economically easy to get to, systems code is just a curious artifact. But I haven't been able to approach this issue until lately, due to health problems. Chances are that Microsoft Research projects will go farther than anything else that's been envisioned, simply by being funded (and there is the effect of Microsoft/Sun educational donations having dried up the attention/funds to systems programming research).

WIndows

Unix/Linux is useless for me. The various shells may be powerful, but they don't hold a candle to MS-Dos for ease of use. Even simple things like changing the environmental variables is hard. The same can be said when comparing DOS edit to emacs or vi.

Moving into the graphical world, every Unix/Linux GUI I have worked with has been very buggy and inconsistent. Sure Windows has its issues, but it is still much more mature than unix.

I have avoided the Macintosh so far because of fears of vendor lockin. It seems to me that everyone complains about MS without realizing that Apple controls both the software and the hardware. At least with my Intel box, I can try non-MS operating systems.
With the new OSX on Intel, Macintosh is looking more promising. However, I am still waiting to hear about a development environment as good as the VB/VS series.

Jonathan Allen

"If the average user cannot figure out how to use a feature, that feature doesn't exist for the average user. Thus for the average user, Unix has less features than a typewriter without a backspace key."

ease?

"shells may be powerful, but they don't hold a candle to MS-Dos for ease of use."

yes, certainly it's far easier to fully type commands and filenames rather than rely on tab completion.

"Even simple things like changing the environmental variables is hard"

like "set foo=2" (DOS) vs "foo=2" (bash)?

"The same can be said when comparing DOS edit to emacs or vi."

yeah, sure anything with drop down menus is far easier on novice. Except when you have to make the same change over and over and wish the editor had keyboard macros or when navigating large blocks of text with nothing more than pageup/pagedwn and wishing for marks...

its definately easy to get in, and to get out once you know something more powerful.

"If the average user cannot figure out how to use a feature, that feature doesn't exist for the average user. Thus for the average user, Unix has less features than a typewriter without a backspace key."

the average user is average for a reason.

Well-played, sir!

Now that's trolling at its finest. When done poorly (or done to be disruptive), trolls are the bane of any Internet (or offline) community, and deserve to be exiled forthwith.

But when done properly (and sparingly), a well-executed troll is a thing of beauty.

I wonder how many indignant replies you'll receive... so far, one such reply has been posted. :)

I am serious

I wasn't joking, trolling, or playing any other games. I was dead serious.

like "set foo=2" (DOS) vs "foo=2" (bash)?

Explanations like that are useless to me, because the poster didn't first tell me how to determine if I was using bash. Nor did the poster tell me what the syntax would be for a non-bash shell.

An aside, how would I find that information? The man pages assume that you already know the name of the command you want to use, and some (i.e. this example) don’t even really have a name. With Windows, I can at least to type Help to see a list of common commands.

As for vi and emacs, why don't they have the same capabilities as DOS edit?

This is a real issue many facing many products. Why did the developers spend so much time of the advanced stuff, while neglecting the basics that would have made them accessible to the majority of users? I can see no reason why vi or emacs cannot have the same features as DOS edit in addition to their advanced capabilities.

"If the average user cannot figure out how to use a feature, that feature doesn't exist for the average user. Thus for the average user, Unix has less features than a typewriter without a backspace key."

the average user is average for a reason.

I find this sort of attitude to be very juvenile and unprofessional. Average implies 50%; if 50% of my target audience finds that my program is too hard to use, then I did something seriously wrong.

Operating systems like UNIX and Linux don’t have chance in the general marketplace because the developers are too lazy to make their programs easy to use. Ease of use is a hard problem, and frankly not very interesting, so I understand why it is often neglected. But for professionals, that is not a valid reason for not doing the right thing. They are getting better, but the command line interface still needs a complete overhaul before the average user can touch it.

The right thing!

But for professionals, that is not a valid reason for not doing the right thing.

Ah, when it comes to the Right Thing, I don't think you'll find that in Unix. Although, it is getting better. Unfortunately, I don't think you'll find that design philosophy in any popular OS. Again, they are getting better, but we've still got a long way to go.

And with that, I do have to say, I would be fun to play with one of the systems that have that design philosophy. The Lisp Machines, and a Smalltalk OS are one's I've heard about. Squeak is pretty cool---albeit kind of "Fisher Price." It would be interesting to work on a system like that that ran "on the metal."

Since your serious...

I'll treat your comment seriously.

Is it possible, that DOS (or whatever the Windows command shell is called these days) seems more familiar to you, because you're familiar with it?

Confusing familiarity with ease of use is a common error; the only fair comparison is when one considers a user who is unfamiliar with all systems under consideration.

Neither command shell is all that usable to those without some training. If I'm a newbie user, I wouldn't know that to get a directory on Windows I type "dir"; nor would I know to type "ls" on a Unix machine. I'll give MS points for having documentation available at "help" (as opposed to "man" or "apropos", neither of which is particularly intuitive). I'll also give MS points for a sort option to dir (in Unix one pipes the output of ls to sort, if one wants a sort order other than the ls default). But the Windows command shell, overall, doesn't strike me as particularly more novice-friendly than the Unix variety--command shells, by their nature, are poor interfaces for neophytes to access the computer with.

Regarding the emacs/vi question: What is it you desire? Both can do far more than dos edit; perhaps what you want is an editor which a neophyte can use without having to know a ton of commands to enter insert mode, or such. Such an editor exists on most Unix systems, it's called pico.

Regarding the chance of Unix/Linux systems in the marketplace--they're doing very well, last I checked. MS is still the dominant desktop player--especially in the home--but many office desktops now have penguins inside them. Making pronouncements which contain language like "never" is almost always premature hubris--just ask IBM.

Tip from an ex-MS-DOS guy

I'll also give MS points for a sort option to dir (in Unix one pipes the output of ls to sort, if one wants a sort order other than the ls default).

Running ls --help|grep sort reveals quite a few options for sorting the output. I quite regularly use -St, myself.

One thing I learned about *nixes when migrating from the DOS/Win world is that they usually provide at least four ways to do the thing you thought they couldn't do, plus at least one alternative approach that makes the approach you were looking for seem obsolete.

But we are straying off-topic...

Help

I'll give MS points for having documentation available at "help" (as opposed to "man" or "apropos", neither of which is particularly intuitive).

Actually, typing help at the prompt for the default shell (bash) on both my Mac and my (Red Hat) Linux box produces this friendly message

These shell commands are defined internally.  Type `help' to see this list.
Type `help name' to find out more about the function `name'.
Use `info bash' to find out more about the shell in general.
Use `man -k' or `info' to find out more about commands not in this list.

followed by a list of the bash internal commands. Granted, the bash internal commands aren't necessarily all that helpful, but the message also points me at man -k, which is useful, since it's apropos under another name.

Operating systems like UNIX

If you don't want that power (or the associated documentation), then by all means use something other than UNIX.

Again, that is the kind of attitude I find to be very detrimental. I don’t think I am alone in wanting programs that are both intuitive enough to use with minimal documentation and yet still have well documented advanced features for the people who need them. There is no reason why I cannot have both.

In regards to the audience, a text editor is one of the core utilities in any operating system that every person has to use on a regular basis. Therefore, any text editor should be usable by every person.

As for my comment about the “marketplace”, I am referring to the kind of stores in which the average person buys software. I don’t write software for computer scientists and network administrators, I write software for laymen who need to accomplish something.

But that's life. It's also a language issue! Woohoo!

Again, that is the kind of attitude I find to be very detrimental.

There are lots of cases where the more powerful choice is the more difficult to learn. A manual transmission gives you more power (because it gives you more control) than an automatic. Thats not a bad thing, its just different.

In computing, a program (or programming language---the off topic thread comes full circle and is now on topic for LTU!) is powerful when it lets you do what you need to do, but that requires learning how to use the program. Sure, given two equally powerful programs it is perfectly reasonable that one might be easier to use than the other (in which case the easier one might be the better choice). To be so easy that a person could use it without having to learn a whole system, requires that the program do what you desire of it for you. That requires the program to know what you want. Unfortunately, it is very difficult (I argue impossible) to foresee every possible use of a particular program, hence that program will be less powerful than one that gives you more power via what is essentially a DSL (even if it is a graphical one).

In regards to the audience, a text editor is one of the core utilities in any operating system that every person has to use on a regular basis.

Yes.

Therefore, any text editor should be usable by every person.

No.

I agree that there should be a text editor on the system usable by every person, but not that every text editor be usable by every person. Earlier you were complaining about vi and emacs. Now, if those were the only options, you might have a point, but their not. Most UNIX systems have alternatives to vi and emacs, for example: cat and ed (I kid! I kid!). Seriously, there are more user friendly alternatives out there besides vi and emacs. Personally, for quick and dirty editing, I like to use vim. (I'm an oxymoron: I like vim better than emacs, and I like Lisp too!) Now, most people who know how to use vim and emacs can tell you that they are more powerful than a plain old text editor. To make them usable by every person would require that most of that power be taken away. For example, one of my favorite things about vim is its easy navigation and editing commands (hjkl for moving around, p for paste, etc.). I like these commands much better than the ctrl-this ctrl-that of some editors (ehem...emacs) and the mouse driven commands of other editors. Now, in order for this to work properly, vim has to have different modes of operations. At this point we've gone past the point of usability of the average user. But you take away the modes to make it usable by the average user, and you take away one of the most powerful features of vim.

Earlier it was stated that the average user is average for a reason. This is true, but not in the sense you might think. Its not me being arrogant or anything. The average user isn't stupid. They are more than intelligent enough to learn vim. Its just that they are uninterested. They are mentally lazy. They don't want to learn how to use a program, they just want to use it.

I'll tell you a secret, okay? I didn't learn how to drive until I was 20 years old. Now, I'm not stupid. I'm not of such low intelligence that I couldn't figure out how to drive until I was 20 years old. No, I was simply uninterested. I learned how to drive, not because I had a burning desire to drive across the country, but out of necessity. I don't like to drive to this very day. I do it because it is a necessary part of the modern life, especially where I live: a fairly rural area with no public transportation. But you know what? I had a desire (I wanted have the ability to go to work, the store, and other places without having to rely on other people), but in order to meet that desire, I had to get a car. Now, what do you suppose an honest car dealer would tell me if I said to him, “I need a car that is easy to drive, one that will just work.”? It sounds like such a reasonable request, but anybody who owns a car can tell you such a request is impossible to satisfy. If I want a car, I'll first have to learn how to use it. Driving is hard. I would argue it is much harder to learn how to drive than it is to learn the basics of text editing with vim. Driving requires coordination and you have to have an ability to focus on the road while at the same time watching around the vehicle for dangers. Now if I simply learned how to drive, I would be partly there, but I still might be surprised to learn that I was suppose to periodically get my oil changed when my engine goes bad, or that I was suppose to keep an eye out for bad/low tires, when one blows on the highway.

As far as tools go, some tools are for professionals, and some are not. I am an average cook. I'm average for a reason (You guessed it: I haven't put forth the effort to become better than average!). I would be lost if you put me in a professional chef's kitchen. I wouldn't know the first thing about how to use the equipment, but there is no doubt in my mind that the equipment is much more powerful than the equipment I have in my kitchen. You wouldn't expect that a professional chef use the same tools that I use, would you? Or that his tools be easy enough for me to just walk in there and start using them? No, that would be absurd! There is no way his tools could be that simple, unless if they were preset to do certain things that I understood. But, if they did that, then they would no longer be powerful tools, because they could only do what the builder of the tool envisioned, and not what the chef envisioned.

Unix, conventions, and other systems.

There is some points about Unix (actually Linux) which I find rarely mentionned.

First, the whole Unix idea (see the original CACM paper on Unix) was about combining cleverly several small programs for customizing or enhancing data processing.

This is the whole insight in the original shell, and the pipe mechanism. The 1980's or 90's unix system could not be useful without the pipe(2) system call.

And STDIN_FILENO don't appear often inside Linux kernel's source. And indeed, it is just a human convention that Unix programs take their main input from file descriptor 0 and produce their output on file descriptor 1. Of course, this convention is enforced by most unix commands, and by the shell.

But we could live with a different convention. (BTW, stuff like D-bus or Corba are somehow similar to such different conventions).

And with today's Linux major applications (like Gimp, Firefox, Openoffice, ...) such conventions are much less important, and the whole idea of cleverly combining several programs has gone: there is no simple way to, for instance, inject a piece of a web page from Firefox into an openoffice document (you can do that with your mouse, or using scripting languages; but it is not as easy as the old pipe trick in unix commands, and certainly not easy to program as quickly as a dirty shell script).

My point is that, from a language point of view, current Linux applications are very different from old unix commands. Current applications are (unfortunately) no more designed to be combined, and the whole idea of combining or pluging various software has gone (in recent Linux big software).

And once could indeed have a Linux system where every program is (e.g. a FastCGI server) interacting with a browser, which would then become the current equivalent of the console (or xterm, which is just a virtual console) in the 1990's.

Why does the idea of combining programs has faded away and became irrelevant on modern Linux systems? (An ordinary Linux user probably don't use the pipe mechanism often, while it was central to Unix 20 years ago).

well, then...

"Nor did the poster tell me what the syntax would be for a non-bash shell."

And how did you know what was the DOS syntax in the first place?

"An aside, how would I find that information? ...With Windows, I can at least to type Help to see a list of common commands."

So, you never used a computer before and it shows you nothing more than a black screen and a blinking text cursor. You type "hello". Nothing happens. "hi" doesn't work either. "obbey my commands, stupid machine", nothing yet. "aaaaarrrgggh" is no use.

Finally, in total despair, you type "help"´and the few DOS commands are available to you, in alphabetic order. Yeah, definately better than "man" and its "What manual page do you want?" and not accepting page "numbers".

That's why, i guess, the FSF opted for the much more approachable "info" documentation system. I guess it could be the guy's second choice after "help".

"As for vi and emacs, why don't they have the same capabilities as DOS edit?"

Now, you either is really trolling or just playing dumb. I imagine you're talking about drop-down menus? Both emacs and gvim provide them for the novice.

"Why did the developers spend so much time of the advanced stuff, while neglecting the basics that would have made them accessible to the majority of users?"

The original Unix command set was not created with "the majority of users" in mind. Actually, they were developed way before computers went mainstream among the general non-technical population and "the majority of users" were computer technicians indeed.

Most modern *nix projects, like KDE, GNOME and othersm though, are far more approacheable for non-technical people.

"Average implies 50%; if 50% of my target audience finds that my program is too hard to use, then I did something seriously wrong."

Do not suffer this much. If you were designing an intercontinental plane, you're not supposed to make it so that _any_ person can pilot it. Sometimes, the goal is to have power at the expense of ease of use. Those who wish to harness such power will have to train themselves at it, study it.

"the command line interface still needs a complete overhaul before the average user can touch it."

It will happen when AI is advanced enough so that it can disabiguate human language phrases. But then, people will likely feel better talking to their machine rather than typing at a keyboard, so that the command-line interface will always be better enjoyed by technical people anyway, who wants their stuff done directly without much intervention from an eletronic nanny...

Debian Unstable

I run debian unstable.

also Debian/unstable (=Sid)

So do I on the two desktops I work on.

BTW, when at office, I often ssh to my home PC for development (I'm working on GCC, the MELT branch). It's faster.

My laptop is running Ubuntu/Intrepid. I used to have Debian/Sid on it, but I find the interface to the Wiki simpler on Ubunutu (and also, Ubuntu has many proprietary drivers).

Ubuntu, Gentoo, WinXP

Gentoo & Windows XP at home, Ubuntu & Windows XP at work.

Windows is really more practical for games and multimedia stuff. For anything else, I'm much more comfortable with unix. I haven't tried OS X, but I guess I would like it (nevermind that Macs are insanely pricy where I live).

Oberon, of course

Man, it didn't take us long to re-focus this post onto tools and language issues. Let's take a look at the "off topic" posts.


The first voice in the wilderness is John Carter, railing against complexity. Man, I feel your pain. I think you would like this link: Chuck Moore's ColorForth. Especiall check out his IDE driver.


Next, Benjamin Cutler mentions that C++, C#, and Java are complex. A trend is emerging.

Scheme and Common Lisp are arguably much simpler than C#. In fact, when I first learned Lisp, my first thought was "This is so simple, you don't even have to hardly think about how to write a solution: you just write down what your thinking."

Later he says:

The major problem with Scheme and Common Lisp (and many languages with non-imperative features/ideas) is the learning curve.... Until then, you might find the language difficult if you've trained yourself in a different paradigm.

The implicit admission is that most programmers are much more familiar with, say, C++ or Java than Scheme or Lisp, which I think is a fair assessment. Later, this issue of familiarity (plus the rather rudimentary help systems in both DOS and UNIX) will rear its head again.


Brian Rice has some info on how human foibles can kill a project, then mentions Slate. Congrats on your work in this area, Brian, I really think you are on to something. Although SmallTalk is not my favorite language, I was super-impressed when I installed Squeak, and I'm sure I'll be impresed when I install Slate.

It's also a scripting language with its own environment.

This was almost an aside, but I think it is key. I think that an excellent future operating system will use the system language as the scripting language. Having sh separate from C made sense when resources were tight, but nowadays, more power (and simplicity) can be had by having these be the same language. There is less to learn, and less semantic dissonance when you are "scripting" your OS.


Finally, John Carter hits the nail on the head with:

The correct Question is...
"As a Program Language Design Geek, what OS currently holds most promise of fulfilling my dreams of simplicity, elegance and power ..."

So, it seems that what we all want are the following:
Simplicity, then familiarity, in that order.

When I am frustrated with what I have to use, it is usually because of one of the following:
- Difficulty of fitting parts together
- Difficulty of writing new parts
- Lack of orthoganality/linking all libraries in the system

That is why I think that FutureOS will look a lot like Squeak or Slate. Loosely coupled, and not written in C. (I am not dissing C, but it does promote some bad habits which are death to large systems -- difficulty in maintaining strict interfaces chief among them. This leads to the pile-it-on problem.)

One day, someone will write that OS. Perhaps in a fit of rage, I will. Hopefully Brian will beat me to it. :)

P.S. For day to day stuff I'm using Ubuntu. I keep a win2k machine for running windows binaries, and an OpenBSD machine for a firewall. If I had more money, I would give OS X a try.

Languages ARE Operating Systems

...and vice versa...

General purpose programming languages should be judged in part by their suitability as operating systems, and operating systems should be judged in part by their symmetry of interface and suitability as a programming language.

Some languages stand up better under this scrutiny than do others. Smalltalk, Lisp, Logo Writer, Ruby, and (of course) Oberon all fare quite well. C, with its external linker that prevents casual operation and extension from 'within' a C environment, doesn't fare quite so well.

I'd love to get rid of the artificial division between OS and language that exists today. It wouldn't prevent working with other languages, but it would mean doing so involves compiling to the OS's language rather than to machine code. Essentially, a language with sufficiently powerful compile-time metaprogramming facilities would serve the purpose of providing all other 'languages' used by an OS.

I guess the way I wrote the above sounds a bit combative. But, yeah, essentially I agree with Adam. Alan Kay's work on 'reinvention of computing' also leads in this direction, as does my own unfunded labor.

All of them...

I am OS neutral. I use Windows (XP and Vista), Linux, OS X, and HP-UX daily, depending on which makes my life easier for the task at hand. Because I have to jump around a lot from one OS to another, I've collected a set of development tools that is portable from one system to another. Vim is my essential tool. When I'm working on Windows I always install Cygwin so that I can have bash, vim, grep, ssh, and tar. Netbeans is my GUI IDE because it plays nicely with the scripting languages I work with.

Linux for work, WindowsXP for games

And at work, let's say that I'm very grateful to be allowed to used Linux instead of Windows as I have far less problem with it..

I used to be a gamer so my personnal PC is running WindowsXP, now I don't run game anymores so I'll switch to Linux eventually.

So... Let's Make an Operating System!

We already have a thread dedicated to building a language. Is there one like that for building an Operating System around here? (Not that these tasks are unrelated, but people focusing on 'language' - at least those without lannguage design experience - tend to focus on syntax more than semantics and features.)

Actually both threads are

Actually both threads are barely on topic for LtU.

Well, you're definitely

Well, you're definitely someone who can assert that in an official capacity.

But I feel some need to defend such topics. I'm of the opinion that theory and practice cannot be divided. And practical application of PLT really means its use in interface designs of all sorts: programming languages, library APIs, communications protocols, type systems, and operating systems among them. OTOH, topics like "Let's build a programming language" are hardly discussions related to "existing work".

LtU is foremost a place to learn and exchange ideas. The LtU Forum is not a debating forum for advocacy, posturing, attacks, vendettas, or advertising. It is a forum for informed professional discussion related to existing work.

I can see why you'd prefer to focus on papers and products, though. Doing so seriously reduces risks of topics created entirely for advocacy and posturing.

Still, I can offer one short story: I discovered this forum only through a link to Frank's comments in "Let's build a programming language" - a page from which I learned and was able to benefit from an exchange of ideas between people who (largely) discussed the topic in a manner befitting informed professionals.

Detail design

Taking the liberty of inferring what Ehud has to say... Detailed design discussions, like building a PL or an OS from scratch, have a tendency to focus too much attention on implementation details and not enough attention on areas of general interest. They also don't tend to get any actual work done - just a lot of idealism. The relevant part of the policies document is:

Discussions which start out with the posting of an opinion or idea that hasn't been clearly described, and for which no references are given, tend to result in unproductive debates with a reduced quality of discussion. It is much easier to evaluate and respond to someone's position when given a link to a carefully thought-out description of that position, and/or references which put the idea in a clear context. If a long description proves necessary, it should be posted elsewhere, such as on your own blog or website, and posted as a link on LtU.

So I think what Ehud is saying that minor excursions into these things is tolerated. But if a PL or OS is to be developed, the best bet is to go off and do the work, posting the details elsewhere, and then come back to LtU with a link that has the ideas refined. The LtU audience is too varied to really come to any sort of agreement on an optimum PL or OS - though there can be lots of interesting opinions expressed. And hashing out new ideas in raw form is not necessarily productive. Anyhow, Ehud didn't say it was off-topic, he just said it was barely on-topic.

Ehud can correct me if I'm reading his advisory in the wrong way.

Expectations

I wouldn't expect a detailed OS design from a "Let's build an OS" topic any more than I'd expect a detailed language design from a "Let's build a language" topic (which, for the record, is not at all). Rather, what such a topic provides is a vector for people to voice which 'general properties' of a language or OS that they see as important or deserving of greater priority. These ideas, the discussions, and the links to more in-depth material, when provided by a large group of professionals with a real interest in PLT, provide an outstanding place to start brainstorming work for such things as next-generation operating systems and languages. The variation among LtU members is only an advantage for this purpose because it is likely that they have thought of things and voiced ideas or concerns that you or I have not even begun to consider.

Still, it's off topic (or 'barely on topic'). One wouldn't want too many of these brainstorming discussions floating around. But, like a heady wine, a little bit can be good for the heart. Moderation in all things, right? And you guys are the moderators.

Mostly moderation through persuasion

Although I have sympathy for what you are saying, I also figure that the LtU ethos has been to try and funnel opinions via discussions grounded in external resources. For the most part, this has served LtU well over time - though it may have prematurely curbed some interesting discussions as well. Anyhow, the solution is rather simple. If a topic interests someone, they can write up a well-thought out piece elsewhere and post a link here on LtU. That way, the disucssion can elicit opinions on topics of general interests, but be directed to original material to determine whether a thread is straying too far off course. The external resource provides a needed focal point.

As for moderation, it has only been applied a handful of times, and only in the most egregious instances where things get disruptive and attempts at persuasion fail. Ehud and other long-term participants really don't like applying a heavy hand. The above reproach is simply a mild reminder of the course that LtU has attempted to lay out.

Couldn't have said it better

Couldn't have said it better myself.