That would be more compelling if their success was more directly coupled with their technical design.
Unix is not technically incompetent (certainly given the needs of the times it was designed in), but its real success now is largely based on it already being an incombent, and being open enough for projects to work from.
Original Unix is dead, it lives on through copy-cats, and they copied it mostly because an experienced user-base makes adoption easier.
In other words, the only time Unix was primarly selected for technical reasons was very short lived. Now its technical benefits are little more relevant than the technical benefits of a qwerty keyboard.
>> That would be more compelling if their success was more directly coupled with their technical design.
>> Unix is not technically incompetent (certainly given the needs of the times it was designed in), but its real success now is largely based on it already being an incombent, and being open enough for projects to work from.
I disagree.
The technical design of Unix and C as the implementation language were major factors to its success and versatility.
Eric Raymond describes the design choices and culture of Unix that helped make it successful:
* Rule of Modularity: Write simple parts connected by clean interfaces.
* Rule of Clarity: Clarity is better than cleverness.
* Rule of Composition: Design programs to be connected to other programs.
* Rule of Separation: Separate policy from mechanism; separate interfaces from engines.
* Rule of Simplicity: Design for simplicity; add complexity only where you must.
* Rule of Parsimony: Write a big program only when it is clear by demonstration that nothing else will do.
* Rule of Transparency: Design for visibility to make inspection and debugging easier.
* Rule of Robustness: Robustness is the child of transparency and simplicity.
* Rule of Representation: Fold knowledge into data so program logic can be stupid and robust.
* Rule of Least Surprise: In interface design, always do the least surprising thing.
* Rule of Silence: When a program has nothing surprising to say, it should say nothing.
* Rule of Repair: When you must fail, fail noisily and as soon as possible.
* Rule of Economy: Programmer time is expensive; conserve it in preference to machine time.
* Rule of Generation: Avoid hand-hacking; write programs to write programs when you can.
* Rule of Optimization: Prototype before polishing. Get it working before you optimize it.
* Rule of Diversity: Distrust all claims for “one true way”.
* Rule of Extensibility: Design for the future, because it will be here sooner than you think.
Unix is not technically incompetent (certainly given the needs of the times it was designed in), but its real success now is largely based on it already being an incombent, and being open enough for projects to work from.
Original Unix is dead, it lives on through copy-cats, and they copied it mostly because an experienced user-base makes adoption easier.
In other words, the only time Unix was primarly selected for technical reasons was very short lived. Now its technical benefits are little more relevant than the technical benefits of a qwerty keyboard.