"Maybe these consultants are confusing dying with age. UNIX is old, a lot older than the other operating systems that have long since passed on. In spite of its twenty-six years, however, UNIX continues to crunch numbers while younger systems can only gum them till they're mushy. What explains this mysterious longevity?
"I have a theory. UNIX survives because, unlike other operating systems, it lacks doubt and guilt. UNIX does just what you tell it to, as quickly and efficiently as it can, and then it waits for more work. It doesn't worry about whether what you asked it to do was fair, beneficial, or even sensible. It just does it.
"By contrast, Windows frets about you. It offers you hints and choices and dialog boxes. Help is everywhere (for what it's worth). And if you ask Windows to do anything of consequence, it asks you to confirm your request, and then it tells you what it did. Delete a large number of files, and Windows is exhausted. It's not the work, it's the *stress*. It's no wonder that Windows systems tend to freeze up where a UNIX system would crash.
"UNIX snorts at Windows-style solicitude. UNIX doesn't ask you to confirm--if you didn't want it to do what you asked, why did you ask it? Similarly, it won't annoy you by reporting the consequences of what you did. Why would you enter a command if you don't first know its consequences?"
Heather Garvey / raven@xnet.com