ugh.book

176 Programming

The designers of the Interlisp environment had a completely different

approach. They decided to develop large sophisticated tools that took a

long time to learn how to use. The payoff for investing the time to use the

tools would be that the programmer who learned the tools would be more

productive for it. That seems reasonable.

Sadly, few programmers of today’s machines know what it is like to use

such an environment, in all its glory.

Programming in Plato’s Cave ....................................................

I got the impression that the objective [of computer language design

and tool development] was to lift everyone to the highest productivity

level, not the lowest or median.

—From a posting to comp.lang.c++

This has not been true of other industries that have become exten-

sively automated. When people walk into a modern automated fast-

food restaurant, they expect consistency, not haute cuisine. Consis-

tent mediocrity, delivered on a large scale, is much more profitable

than anything on a small scale, no matter how efficient it might be.

—Response to the netnews message by a member of

the technical staff of an unnamed company.^1

Unix is not the world’s best software environment—it is not even a good

one. The Unix programming tools are meager and hard to use; most PC

debuggers put most Unix debuggers to shame; interpreters remain the play

toy of the very rich; and change logs and audit trails are recorded at the

whim of the person being audited. Yet somehow Unix maintains its reputa-

tion as a programmer’s dream. Maybe it lets programmers dream about

being productive, rather than letting them actually be productive.

(^1) This person wrote to us saying: “Apparently a message I posted on comp.lang.c++
was relayed to the UNIX-HATERS mailing list. If I had known that, I would not
have posted it in the first place. I definitely do not want my name, or anything I
have written, associated with anything with the title ‘UNIX-HATERS.’ The risk
that people will misuse it is just too large.... You may use the quote, but not my
name or affiliation.”