To be fair I didn't necessarily just have UNIX in mind with that statement, I also mean whats happening to appliances, vehicles, etc. It's part of a bigger problem, we're just of course mostly discussing the implications of that problem vis-a-vis UNIX. Believe me, I also wish I could peer under the hood of a modern car and tell you how to actually replace something in there with just a socket and a set of pliers... - Matt G. ------- Original Message ------- On Thursday, January 19th, 2023 at 3:44 PM, Rich Salz wrote: >> In my mind there would probably be a strong correlation between engineers making products unnecessarily complicated (whether they want to or not) and end users deciding en masse not to sink the time into learning how to maintain increasingly convoluted and esoteric designs. > > To me, the biggest surprise about Unix history is that the Bell patent office secretaries were able to use ed and [nt]roff. I cannot imagine the general populace doing that. > > Folks on this list will be fine, there will always be programming environments for us. For the rest of the world, simpler is better and simpler isn't Unix.