Re: Curious...Are most of you in tech-related careers/schooling?
"Scott --sidewalking--" <sidewalking@webpipe.net> writes:
> [ ... ]
>
> I wonder if all (or most) of you are in similar careers and that is
> why you are so proficient with compiling and testing and tweaking
> all of this stuff. Or is it just a hobby that has gone on for so
> long that you have advanced your knowledge of Linux/Debian to these
> levels that all of you are at?
>
> Just curious...
Well, as for me, I wrote my first computer program in 1969, and we all
used puchcards and paper tape and printouts, as well as console entry
switches on the computer itself. We programmed in Assembly Language,
FORTRAN, PL/I, and some people used a new, state-of-the-art experimental
language called Basic, which actually ran on an interactive terminal (a
10 character-per-second teletype that also accepted paper tape).
Some people used COBOL, ALGOL, and other languages, but I didn't see
those until later.
Anyway, back then, everyone compiled source code without the benefit of
anything resembling a graphical user interface.
Then, in 1975, I got to play with a fairly new operating system that was
making the rounds at various universities. It was called Unix.
Unix contained constructs that made all of us hackers (that was a
positive term back then ... it meant "geeks") drool, because it had a
really cool language called C which was a higher-level language that was
also written to be able to do byte and bit manipulation just like
Assembly Language. And it had really neat things like
auto-increment/auto-decrement (both pre- and post- !) and something
etherial that sent us to software nirvana called "pointers". C wasn't
the first language to have some of these features, but the way it was
put together into one language was a work of art!
Unix kept getting more and more popular, and soon it had taken over most
University computer departments because it was so cool. Thousands or
maybe millions of software nerds were studying and improving Unix.
Linux is a version of Unix that first came out in the mid-1990's.
So by now, it's part of the nearly 30-year evolution of the original
Unix.
Microsoft Windows has been around for around 18 years, but not in its
current form until around 1995. That means that Unix has a 20-year jump
on Windows in terms of sophistication, quality, reliability, etc.
In other words, MS Windows is a Johnny-come-lately, while Linux, and its
direct ancestor Unix, are a standard that has been around for a long
time.
Many of us love Linux because it's a robust, reliable, powerful, "lean
and mean" OS, as opposed to the hacky bloatware that comes out of
Microsoft.
Many of us love Linux because it's free, and because thousands of people
all over the world are contstantly volunteering their time to write and
improve it, and software for it. And "free" means there is no monopoly.
Bill Gates and Microsoft are trying to set up a monopoly, and if they
succeed, software innovation will stand still, since there will no
competition to force the innovation.
Look at Microsoft Word: there is no longer any significant competition
for it, and so it has stagnated into a piece of mega-bloatware junk,
containing hundreds of known bugs which have not been fixed in 10 years
because there is no market incentive to do so. That's the result of a
monopoly.
On the other hand, the Linux world is filled with people working on and
improving the software. There are updated debian packages almost every
day that I download. For free!
So to me, the differences between Windows and Linux fall into three
categories:
1. Quality -- Unix and its descendants such as Linux are robust,
sophisiticated, and very stable. MS Windows is just
now barely approaching a minimum level of stability.
MS Windows is a bloated piece of junk that is trying
to be everything to everyone with a PC, and hence,
it doesn't do hardly anything well. Linux is more
efficient and "leaner".
2. Religion -- Many people in the Linux world (me included) are
morally opposed to the monopolistic practices that
Microsoft engages in, and we believe that working
on free software like Linux is a way to fight against
the devil.
3. Fun -- For a programmer, working under Unix tends to be
a lot of FUN! That's because there is so much
power in the OS and in all the software tools that
other fun-loving programmers have created. Working
in the MS world is much more of a pain in the ass
for lots of us. For me, Linux (and the various
Unix offshoots) is like playing with my toys;
MS Windows is like going to work every day in the
salt mines.
Well, enough of my ranting. But just wait until you read the replies of
someone who is _really_ biased! :)
> :o)
>
> Scott (sidewalking)
--
Lloyd Zusman
ljz@asfast.com
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