#Delphi Sig
13 messages in this thread
Yeah, but the trouble with the Internet is that you need a second life to
find things.
Jack, I've been reading the book THE WHOLE INTERNET. It's a great place to
start. Like any good city, you need to read about it before you get on it.
Imagine going to London or New York cold. You would get lost. I find the same
with the Internet. Also, it's a great place to learn the UNIX operating
system.
Phil 🙂
Phil:
>>Also, it's a great place to learn the UNIX operating system.<<
Sorry, but it looks like the next 10 years or so are booked with learning
Windows <g>.
Best – Rich Bowers
Rich, 10 years, huh?? Must have taken you 20 to learn DOS <BWG>…
Phil 🙂
Phil:
I read your other message about being a "river person." I am more or less
opposite. I subscribe to Einstein's view that I shouldn't have to remember
things that are recorded in a convenient location. I think operating systems
are a tool that should be intended to help me accomplish a task, not be the
task itself.
Over the years, I have learned enough CP/M, DOS, Unix, Windows etc. to get
along. But I decided I wanted to do more with my time than become an expert in
the tool. I'm glad there ares such experts, but not for me. In recent years I
have come to resent the perpetrators of such systems, because their lack of
sensitivity toward ease-of-use and the everyday consumer is now really holding
back progress. It used to be amusing, but now it's getting in the way of the
serious business we have to accomplish in this world.
So I encourage you to gather up all the knowledge you have about these
increasingly imperfect systems, and work toward assembling an OS that fades
into the bakground and does all the work it's supposed to do. Then let me
know, I help bang the drum for it as loudly as possible!
Best – Rich
Why not? After more than a decade it's clear MicroSoft hasn't quite mastered
DOS, so why should end users be any different?
Jack, you got that right, brother<g>…
Phil 🙂
Once upon a time, I taught myself a couple of programming languages. It took
some time but I finally got the general flow and was able to do a few programs
and look at others, but I suddenly realized that I was having about as much fun
as I would getting the contract to do the sand grain inventory in the Sahara.
I've let other folks do it since.
Unix, to me, combines all the wonders of programming with a visit to the
dentist. Particularly as there are Unix flavors that mask it and almost
"humanize" it, I see no real purpose to learning an OS that, if I put it on my
system, would cost me about $3000 to obtain essentially the same programs I run
right now. Unix was originally designed to run the phone company and it looks
and feels it. Most folks who use it don't use it at home and when they do use
it at work tend to even do things like the Internet through software that
conceals/masks Unix. But if you like it, feel free. I just don't have the time.
Jack, I understand your feelings. But I'm a "wirehead" type of guy and I'm
crazy to learn. I'm tired of Windows and DOS and need a new mountain to
climb. I never did like "shells" or utilities programs, because it made you
dependent on a program and I never considered that "learning".
BTW, you are looking at a guy who made a complete study of EDLIN. Why?
Because I knew it would be on every machine that I would ever use.
I hate working on things that I don't understand and when I first logged in
on the Internet I didn't know my ASCII from a whole in the ground. But after
leaning a little UNIX, I find that I'm enjoying my sessions more.
But you are right, it does take a lot of time to learn. But I'm a "river
person" as Earl Nightengale would say.
Phil 🙂
Well, I have degrees in history, English, geography, geology, and education
so I'm hardly somebody who doesn't like learning. I'd probably still be in grad
school getting something new if I didn't have to earn a living. I also learned
a great deal of electronics because of an involvement in and passion for
consumer electronics over the years. I ran the Johns Hopkins IBM 1091, all 3
clean rooms of it, back in 1965 when it was fed by punch cards by the zillions
and the language of academic research choice was Autocoder, so I'm no neophyte.
But there are priorities and priorities and Unix, which I first looked at and
played with in the Seventies, looked to me then and still looks to me now to be
essentially useless to me.
OS/2 is rock solid and gives excellent protected mode concurrency; CDOS has
been offering much the same for almost a decade now. I don't like Windows for a
lot of things (or GUIs in general) and make my living writing in a very
DOS-based green on black word processor, but for scanning, OCR, and graphics
apps it's where I have to be.
They have a UNIX forum right here on Compuserve too. (GO UNIXFORUM)
Albert, yes I know. What I need is some hands-on experience in a practical
enviroment.
Phil 🙂
Jack,
You forgot to mention the excessive quoting as well, so that you end up reading
the same text a dozen times or more<g>
Adrian