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That's why Unix utterly and completely failed at its chance on the desktop around Windows 3.0 and OS/2. A bunch of people got together into a club, created a set 'standards' and assumed that because they had created a set of said 'standards' that it didn't matter what anyone else did, or how people expected their systems to work.
Windows, DOS and Mac OS were designed for personal computers and didn't even support proper virtual memory subsystems till the year 2000. Case in point Windows XP and MacOS X. Unsurprisingly one of them uses Unix as the base.
The problem was not Unix or its philosophy but the Industry in general making a choice about the kind of OS a personal computer needed.
Ok I'll have to come down one level to get this point across.
There is a reason certain German AutoBahns have no speed limits and they still have lesser accidents than the US. The simple reason is the drivers are better trained and the process of getting a license in much harder.
You have to know how something works. Claiming ignorance is not a design defect. Like opening/running on a file you got from someone that might contain a virus or trojan.
When the backspace key does not do it's intended function, no amount of claiming user ignorance can hide the fact that it's a design flaw, in this case left over from long ago. Dressing it up in car language, a metaphor depressingly often used in these forums and not even close to providing a valid picture of computers, does not change that fact.
People need licenses to drive cars because a car, even in licensed and trained hands, can quickly become a deadly weapon. I have never seen someone kill another person by typing on a keyboard.
Expecting people to get some kind of technical training in order to do something as basic as delete a character in a terminal with the backspace key is absurd, no matter how you attempt to couch it.
No wonder Sun lost out on a vast amount of workstation sales if they are so out of touch they can even see that as being a problem.







Member since:
2005-07-06
That's why Unix utterly and completely failed at its chance on the desktop around Windows 3.0 and OS/2. A bunch of people got together into a club, created a set 'standards' and assumed that because they had created a set of said 'standards' that it didn't matter what anyone else did, or how people expected their systems to work.
That attitude still remains today. Honestly, I ask you. 'Educating' users that the backspace button won't delete text?