[geeks] Mac definitions

[Mark Benson]

On 10 Jul 2011, at 07:37, Mouse wrote:

>>> There is little motive for today's hobbyist to trouble himself to
>>> learn Solaris at home.  [...]
>> I disagree.   Learning different systems gets you to think about
>> things more abstractly than what you see in a single operating
>> system.  This prepares you for learning new ones when they arrive.
>
> Yes...but that's something that few people realize until they have that
> experience.  In other words, it isn't really - though I wish it were -
> a reason for people without that variety of experience to acquire it.

Some people are naturally curious. Some of us when told "oh that systems
radically different you'll not get on with it if you are use to 'UNIX'" see
that as a challenge, not a detraction. It depends on the individual's
mentality for the most part. Some 'hobbyists' will  never stray much farther
into 'alternate' OSs than Linux or BSD, some will see other stuff and want to
try it out. Companies that nurture hobbyists nurture faith and endearment in
their products. I've only scratched the surface of VMS and I already think
it's a great OS. I wish I'd gotten into it earlier. I love Solaris but I'm not
happy to use it or enthuse about it anymore because of Ellison's apparent 'get
lost you aren't making ups any money' attitude.

> I'm very glad I went through my larval phase under VMS, and have used
> some other (drastically non-POSIX) OSes, such as PLATO and Lisp
> Machines.  Even though I almost never actually use any specifics from
> them, the perspective, the awareness that there are other ways out
> there and at least a vague idea how some of them differ from Unix, has
> been tremendously valuable to me.

I kind of attacked this backwards, I branched out into many and varied forms
of UNIX first, then went back to learn VMS. I thought VMS would be a massive
uphill struggle but in fact it's so well documented (both inside and outside
the OS) and has a community that supports hobbyists well and with remarkably
natural tolerance for stupid questions :).

--
Mark Benson

My Blog:
<http://markbenson.org/blog>
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"Never send a human to do a machine's job..."