[COFF] [TUHS] V9 shell [was Re: Warner's Early Unix Presentation]

[COFF] [TUHS] V9 shell [was Re: Warner's Early Unix Presentation]

[steffen]

Jon Steinhart wrote in
<202002120012.01C0CpEC3910426 at darkstar.fourwinds.com>:
 |Steffen Nurpmeso writes:
 |> Of course you are right, you will likely need to focus your mind,
 |> and that requires an intellectual context, knowledge, to base upon.
 |
 |Interesting that you mention this as I'm about to leave for a multi-day
 |advanced yoga workshop.  One of the things that I like about yoga is that

Then i wish you a good time, and deep breath!

 |you do have to learn to focus your mind, and it's amazingly difficult to
 |be focused on something as seemingly simple as standing up straight.  I
 |don't think that it's reasonable to expect people to be able to focus
 |without training.  Can you imagine if a computer tried to follow all of
 |your fleeting thoughts?

I feel clearly overrated.  The last time i had such fleeting was
i know when, no good, i "collapsed with overflow" like John
Falkens computer in Wargames.  But i have the impression that "the
only winning move is not to play" is not very hip.

 |In some respects, this takes me back to the early days of speech recogni\
 |tion.
 |I remember people enthusiastically telling me how it would solve the \
 |problem
 |of repetitive stress injuries.  They were surprised when I pointed out that
 |most people who use their voice in their work actually take vocal training;
 |RSIs are not uncommon among performers.
 |
 |So really, what problem are we trying to solve here?  I would claim \
 |that the
 |problem is signal-to-noise ratio degradation that's a result of too many
 |people "learning to code" who have never learned to think.  Much like \
 |I feel
 |that it became harder to find good music when MIDI was invented because \
 |there
 |was all of a sudden a lot more noise masquerading as music.

I am chewing on that one.  You can be lucky to have lived in times
with great classical music artists as well as a tremendous flurry
of styles, ideas etc. otherwise.  In the 60s and 70s and even the
first half of the 80s so much has happened.  Not only in music.
Just take psychological treatment, before there was lobotomy and
electrical shocks, and studied persons stood on these ground solid
as rocks, but then it exploded.
Today the situation is really bad.  And that "everyone is an
artist" was surely as naive as "everyone shall learn coding".
But i have spend long hours in MIDI piano rolls and i think you
are right.  Unfortunately.

 |I'm reminded of a Usenix panel session that I moderated on the future \
 |of window
 |systems a long time ago.  Rob was on the panel as was some guy whose name I
 |can't remember from Silicon Graphics.  The highlight of the presentation \
 |was
 |when Robin asked the question "So, if I understand what the SGI person \
 |is saying,
 |it doesn't matter how ugly your shirt is, you can always cover it up \
 |with a nice
 |jacket...."  While she was asking the question Rob anticipated the \
 |rest of the
 |question and started unbuttoning his shirt.
 |
 |So maybe I'm just an old-school minimalist, but I think that the biggest \
 |problem
 |that needs solving is good low-level abstractions that are simple and \
 |work and
 |don't have to be papered over with layer upon layer on top of them. \
 | I just find
 |myself without the patience to learn all of the magic incantations \
 |of the package
 |of the week.

I like that.

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)