Pipes 163 When was the last time your Unix workstation was as useful as a Macin- tosh? When was the last time it ran programs from different companies (or even different divisions of the same company) that could really communi- cate? If it’s done so at all, it's because some Mac software vendor sweated blood porting its programs to Unix, and tried to make Unix look more like the Mac. The fundamental difference between Unix and the Macintosh operating system is that Unix was designed to please programmers, whereas the Mac was designed to please users. (Windows, on the other hand, was designed to please accountants, but that’s another story.) Research has shown that pipes and redirection are hard to use, not because of conceptual problems, but because of arbitrary and unintuitive limita- tions. It is documented that only those steeped in Unixdom, not run-of-the- mill users, can appreciate or use the power of pipes. Date: Thu, 31 Jan 91 14:29:42 EST From: Jim Davis jrd@media-lab.media.mit.edu To: UNIX-HATERS Subject: Expertise This morning I read an article in the Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, “Expertise in a Computer Operating System,” by Stephanie M. Doane and two others. Guess which operating system she studied? Doane studied the knowledge and performance of Unix novices, intermediates, and expert users. Here are few quotes: “Only experts could successfully produce composite commands that required use of the distinctive features of Unix (e.g. pipes and other redirection symbols).” In other words, every feature that is new in Unix (as opposed to being copied, albeit in a defective or degenerate form from another operat- ing system) is so arcane that it can be used only after years of arcane study and practice. “This finding is somewhat surprising, inasmuch as these are fundamental design features of Unix, and these features are taught in elementary classes.” She also refers to the work of one S. W. Draper, who is said to have believed, as Doane says:

164 csh, pipes, and find “There are no Unix experts, in the naive sense of an exalted group whose knowledge is exhaustive and who need not learn more.” Here I must disagree. It is clear that an attempt to master the absurdi- ties of Unix would exhaust anyone. Some programs even go out of their way to make sure that pipes and file redirection behave differently from one another: From: Leigh L. Klotz klotz@adoc.xerox.com To: UNIX-HATERS Subject: | vs. Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 11:37:14 PDT collard% xtpanel -file xtpanel.out .login unmatched braces unmatched braces unmatched braces 3 unmatched right braces present collard% cat .login | xtpanel -file xtpanel.out collard% You figure it out. Find The most horrifying thing about Unix is that, no matter how many times you hit yourself over the head with it, you never quite manage to lose consciousness. It just goes on and on. —Patrick Sobalvarro Losing a file in a large hierarchical filesystem is a common occurrence. (Think of Imelda Marcos trying to find her pink shoes with the red toe rib- bon among all her closets.) This problem is now hitting PC and Apple users with the advent of large, cheap disks. To solve this problem computer sys- tems provide programs for finding files that match given criteria, that have a particular name, or type, or were created after a particular date. The Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows have powerful file locators that are relatively easy to use and extremely reliable. These file finders were